November 2, 2008 - Eating Machines
Welcome to the Nature Notebook.

Imagine spending most of your waking hours gorging on tasty snacks. It’s certainly not the way to loose weight. Black bears don’t care. In fact, they are trying to gain weight this time of year. Bears eat both meat and plant material. Typical fare includes berries, corn, carrion, honey, insects and fruit during the summer. By fall, they turn to such seasonal offerings as acorns and beechnuts. To build up their fat reserves for winter bears eat as much as possible. When they exhaust food supplies in one place they wander in search of more. Consuming up to 20,000 calories during a 20-hour day is the norm for these hefty bruins. I suppose there isn’t much concern about getting tired from all this activity. After all, in a few short weeks they’ll settle in for a long winter’s sleep.

This is PPL's naturalist, Jon Beam, with the Nature Notebook for WVIA.