October 30, 2011 - Reverse Diet
Welcome to the Nature Notebook.

Dieting is typically an approach to losing weight. For some, it is just the reverse. Instead of reducing calorie intake, black bears increase it each summer, gorging themselves on ripening raspberries, cherries and blueberries. By fall they turn to acorns, beechnuts and hazelnuts to top off their store of fat. They switch their diet through the summer and fall to take advantage of whatever wild foods are ripening throughout the forest. When natural foods are scarce, bears might switch to sources of food supplied by people. Bears might raid beehives, orchards, cornfields or backyard birdfeeders. By this time of year a black bear’s reverse dieting is about finished and their attention turns to finding and readying a den site for their winter’s nap. If they don’t have enough stored fat, they will continue foraging.

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