Animals are not stupid - female bears are nursing their cubs for an extra season

[malaise]

since the ban on killing nursing females was enforced.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/03/27/596998154/new-study-finds-mother-bears-are-sticking-around-with-their-cubs-longer
<snip>
Each spring in the global north, brown bears around the world emerge from their dens with new cubs. The cubs come into the world hapless and fragile. Their fathers are long gone; bear mothers must find a way to raise the cubs while surviving themselves.

Female bears generally spend either 1.5 or 2.5 years with their young. In many ways, the pressures of bear life favor the shorter option — a mother with cubs cannot mate, so the more time she spends with each litter, the fewer offspring she'll have over her lifetime.

But a new study of brown bears in Sweden has found a surprising trend: More and more mothers are spending the extra year with their cubs.

"There's about a 30 percent increase in females staying to care for young for an extra year," explains Fanie Pelletier, an ecologist at Sherbrooke University in Quebec, and an author on the study published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications. "Early on, in the '80s, almost all females stayed with their young for 1 year and a half," she says. "It's only since 2005 that we have witnessed this increase in the population [that are] staying with their young the extra year."

The trend is tied to a hunting regulation that protects family groups from hunters. It's illegal to shoot mother or cubs when they are together.
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Animals are smart

[elleng]

1. 'Animals' are smarter than 'humans,' imo;

more frugal and farsighted.

and none of this: https://nextshark.com/letter-asian-girls/

[malaise]

4. Damn

That's awful

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. Smart Momma Bears!

More power to them!

[malaise]

5. Hi there

[SammyWinstonJack]

3. Why shoot a mother bear or cubs? Not a fan of killing animals.

[malaise]

6. Same here

but many humans are the worst animals - they kill for sport or what they call fun,

[Rhiannon12866]

23. That's my question too.

I thought the justification for hunting was that they killed animals for food. Do people eat bears??

[WhiskeyGrinder]

7. It's not clear to me whether the bears changed their behavior, or whether the population

of bears that tend to nurse their cubs for shorter periods has been reduced.

[Drahthaardogs]

8. BINGO!

Thank you for not anthropomorphizing what is most likely a simple evolution to a new environmental pressue.

Science, it's your friend.

[malaise]

9. Good point but as you say

It isn't clear but they do point to the change in the law

[WhiskeyGrinder]

10. Correlation is not causation.

[malaise]

11. Agree n/t

[GulfCoast66]

12. Thank you for this.

Bears keeping their cubs for 1.5 years are being removed from the population at a higher rate than those that keep them for 2.5 years. Evolution in action.

Bears are not smarter than us. They are definitely smarter than their prey as is normal with predators.

I heard the article on NPR and was very disappointed at the way they downplayed the most obvious explanation.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

13. Science reporting is consistently some of the least accurate reporting, across outlets.

[GulfCoast66]

14. Amen to that...

As a stem major I have noticed that anything even hinting at evolution is downplayed.

[misanthrope]

20. Of course as predators go, brown bears aren't terribly bright

A recent study of neuronal densities in a selection of predators or omnivores found brown bears lagging behind the group. The encephalitic quotient was a major portion of it. Bear in mind, said ursines have a highly omnivorous diet of which meat isn't always a majority.

The results appeared to favor social interaction as a pressure favoring neuronal density.

https://www.livescience.com/61104-dogs-brainier-than-cats.html

[GulfCoast66]

21. Thanks for the info...

And the pun...

Bears are just real interesting to me. They make me think of hogs that hunt. Both will eat meat but with hogs it is more by chance where bears will hunt, in a manner. Both are somewhat self aware. Not mirror test aware, but sure as shit hogs know what is coming come slaughter time. Cows just walk right into it like they are going to graze.

I am often curious where evolution would have taken them. Had not a more rapidly evolved species ending any chance for that to happen.

Have a nice evening

[sl8]

16. The interviewed ecologist seems to suggest the latter.

...
"For females, if you leave your cubs at one year and a half, then you become a target during the next hunting season," explains Pelletier. But "if you stay for a bit longer with your cubs, you're protected an extra year. The hunting is filtering out the females that keep their young for a smaller amount of time."
...

[WhiskeyGrinder]

17. Too bad the article was written like bears were reading hunting regulations and nursing accordingly.

[misanthrope]

18. The most parsimonious answer.

Thanks for thinking scientifically.

[hedda_foil]

19. Thats exactly what I was thinking. The cubs who stay an extra year with mom are more likely to live

They're better nourished and larger before they're shoved out on their own. They also have a chance to learn a lot more from mom than the kids who have to make it on their own at a much younger age. In some ways, it replicates human evolutionary pressures to protect and teach the young for an extended period of time. Our children are grown enough around 8 for more to make it than not but they do so much better staying with their family for years past that. I bet it's the same thing here.

[GulfCoast66]

22. Plus the sows are not being shot.

Add an extra year to their legal protection and I would expect them to become more common.

[X_Digger]

15. Post hoc ergo propter hoc..

It could be that hunters are selecting for bears who raise their young for a shorter time.

Natural selection, in response to predation. No intelligence required.