The research group of Shinsuke Koike, Associate Professor of the Graduate School of Agriculture, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, and Koji Yamazaki, Professor of the Faculty of Regional Environment Science, found that wild Tsukinowaguma eat a large amount of acorns in the fall and store the necessary nutrients for the rest of the period. I found out.It is known that bears appear in the remote areas during the year when acorns are badly harvested, but the appearance of bears in the remote areas in other seasons may also be affected by the bad harvest of acorns in the previous year, and the scientific protection and management of bears. It is expected to contribute to.
According to Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, from 2005 to 2014, the research group installed a GPS device that can track daily activities on 34 adult black bears in the Ashio and Nikko mountains that straddle Tochigi and Gunma prefectures, and consume energy per day. The amount was estimated.
Furthermore, we identified food from 1,247 bear droppings collected in the mountains, estimated the amount of food eaten from a total of 113 hours of video taken by wild bears, and grasped the daily energy intake.
As a result, bears ate ants and raspberries from spring to summer, but since they were scattered in the forest, they could not get nutrition efficiently and their energy consumption exceeded their intake. Was there.
In autumn, we climbed trees and mainly ate acorns that had settled on the trees, so we were able to efficiently ingest energy, and the intake was much higher than the energy consumption.It was revealed that the energy intake of acorns in autumn accounts for 80% of the annual intake, and bears are eating in the fall.
Paper information:[Ecosphere] Estimating the seasonal energy balance in Asian black bears and associated factors
