Social+Behaviors

Bears have short tails, and cannot use them to send signals as do other animals use for communication. This is why the use of their heads, neck, and mouths are used so much in communicating. When they walk with their head down below their shoulders it shows them as aggressive. Also, the facial and mouth expressions are used such as snarling, opening and closing very quickly, salivating, baring teeth, and clacking noises with their teeth are all used for intimidating. It was also reported that sometimes a bear will do 'bluff charging' which is when they run full speed at an intruder, and then stopping just before they reach the intruder. This is meant to scare the intruder into leaving the territory.

This was from a website ([]) that was authored by Doug Updike, a Fish and Game Biologist from California.

In another study that was about black bears at garbage dumps in Alberta, Canada they found that mothers with their young visited the dumps more often that any other type of bear. The report then suggested that the food from the garbage dump increased the survival of the cubs. The average size of a litter that visited was 2.67. It then goes on saying that in the wild the bears are non-social, but when they come to the garbage dump, they put that aside and fed close to each other (3-30 meters). "Black bears are normally solitary except for as-sociations of females with young, males and fe-males during mating, and siblings after weaning (Rogers 1977)." They followed the bears after they left the dump, and then seen that they returned to be non-social animals.

This was from a website ([]) and contained an article written byStephen Herrero.

Posted by BF

Although, American black bears, //Ursus americanus,// are a solitary animal most of the time, it does interact, socially, during mating and while rearing their offspring. It is thought, that the social interaction involved during the offspring rearing process is one of the determining factors for where the bear cub will eventually forage. (Mazur & Seher, 2008).


 * References:**
 * Mazur, R. & Seher, V,** 2008. Socially learned foraging behavior in wild black bears, //Ursus americanus//. //Animal Behavior// **75,** 1503-1508.