6 ms·

Increasing evidence that bears are not carnivores

48 points by wglb 4y ago

lawrenceyan 4y ago
Add some blueberries! Those phenolic antioxidants are great.
bombcar 4y ago
I wonder a bit on the "provide unlimited food and use that to determine what they should eat" - if applied to children we'd learn they should subsist entirely on a diet of candy and soda.
- Brian_K_White 4y ago
  It was just part of gathering data to be factored along with all other data.
- dr_dshiv 4y ago
  But maybe kids would sicken themselves of it if given freedom? Seems to work ok with addictive games, to let them overdo it themselves? A hard topic to study scientifically.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > if applied to children we'd learn they should subsist entirely on a diet of candy and soda Forgot where it is, but I remember reading a study in which gradually-sweeter water was given to kids of different ages. A clear trend emerged: water became too sweet quicker for older kids. For infants, the water saturated before they stopped drinking.
- tzs 4y ago
  That's actually sort of been tried. See "Clara M. Davis and the wisdom of letting children choose their own diets" [1]. Briefly, Davis took a group of newly weaned infants in the 1930s and let them choose what and how much to eat from a set of 33 food items. The experiment was designed so that the caretakers would not influence the children's choices. I don't think candy and soda were among the 33 items--I believe they were all reasonably nutritious foods but with very different mixes of nutrients. All the kids ended up choosing diets from among those items that fit well with their individual nutritional needs. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1626509/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1626509/
  - bscphil 4y ago
    > The foods she offered the children were varied, but all were generally thought to be healthy. Their intrinsic goodness meant that it would have been difficult for her small charges to veer too far from the nutritional straight-and-narrow. In other words, give people the illusion of choice, and they're more willing to accept your limitations. I don't see any evidence here that children (or anyone) have some kind of special insight into their own bodies' "nutritional needs" - to the extent such things are even individualized - but rather, that most people will eat a balanced diet when given the choice. E.g. none of the children became vitamin deficient because none of them chose to eat entirely one kind of food.
    - taeric 4y ago
      Agreed. It doesn't even have to be a ton of choices. Often, give kids the choice of "this is dinner, eat it or you can wait til breakfast if you aren't hungry" is surprisingly effective. And doesn't have to be a fight.
      - jay_kyburz 4y ago
        But I feel mean when I'm eating my ice cream and they are crying over in the corner.
        taeric 4y ago
        Ha! Yeah, you do have to not be a jerk to the kids. Such that they still learn more from imitation than they do lectures or dictation. If you want them to see that "skipping dinner to have a snack" is not the norm, you have to not do it. Which, to bring it back to this thread, I find it very unlikely that unlimited access is at all a universal good idea. Might have worked on 2 of our kids. Would fail dramatically on 1 of them, though. Similarly, anyone that says that just give their pets unlimited access to food, is lucky to not have one that would just binge forever.
        eropple 4y ago
- PragmaticPulp 4y ago
  > if applied to children we'd learn they should subsist entirely on a diet of candy and soda. In the case of animals, this would involve providing unlimited foods similar to what would be found in their natural environment. If we gave kids their choice of naturally-occurring foods to eat, it probably wouldn’t be too terrible. My child was much more into things like broccoli and certain vegetables than I would have guessed. Introduce processed foods and all bets are off, though.
  - oldgradstudent 4y ago
    > If we gave kids their choice of naturally-occurring foods to eat, it probably wouldn’t be too terrible. My child was much more into things like broccoli and certain vegetables than I would have guessed. In what sense is broccoli naturally occurring? It's a heavily artificially selected vegetable not available outside very specific regions before the 20th century. I'd assume that applies to the rest of the vegetables you've mentioned.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- anothernewdude 4y ago
  My child would be eating pasta, spaghetti, broccoli, carrots and peas if that were the case.
sys32768 4y ago
I thought scientists already classified bears as omnivores? I can't recall the last time I saw bear scat that wasn't full of seeds from berries.
- andrewflnr 4y ago
  Since I was a child old enough to know what a bear was, I've been taught bears are omnivores. I don't know what these people are smoking... No, I do know, it's clicks.
- skeeter2020 4y ago
  >> I can't recall the last time I saw bear scat that wasn't full of seeds from berries. Or bear bells if it's Grizzly poop
assbuttbuttass 4y ago
Anyone who's seen bear shit knows their diet is mostly berries
- skeeter2020 4y ago
  That's not really true. Berries are not in season for much of the year in lots of bear habitat. Sure they do eat bearies, but are far more opportunistic in what they consume including grass, roots, herbs, insects, nuts... honey! I assume bears in Iowa have a lot of corn in their shit.
  - klyrs 4y ago
    Which raises an important question: is a corn kernel a berry?
kerblang 4y ago
Clarification: It sounds like they're omnivores instead. Grizzlies will still eat you, if they're really hungry.
larsiusprime 4y ago
Not to be glib but I think the fact that bears are stereotypically depicted as eating Honey might have been the first clue. EDIT: To be fair, clicking beyond the headline, it looks like the ongoing practice at zoos has been to feed them a carnivore diet of mostly meat, which is apparently bad for them, and this article recommends otherwise, which seems sensible.
- nkozyra 4y ago
  They also list polar bears, which I always assumed did not have access to much vegetation for most of the year. Feeding them more fat is one thing, but that doesn't really negate their mostly carnivorous nature.
  - larsiusprime 4y ago
    That's true, I had the same assumption they mostly just ate seals
    - NoGravitas 4y ago
      Right, so that's the thing, polar bears do eat (almost?) exclusively meat. But the zoos are feeding them too much lean meat, and not enough fat. You know, like seal blubber.
      - nkozyra 4y ago
        Yeah that was my point. The title is a little misleading. And in fact what they're really saying is that bears are not being fed a diet consistent with their nutritional makeup in the wild. Which is likely very true of all animals in captivity.
- tsol 4y ago
  These zoos need to get caught up on the latest research. I believe according to Yogi et al. their diet primarily consists of honey and campers' picnic baskets.
autokad 4y ago
I read the article and found it kind of strange. from what I understand is that they gave giant pandas (a bear that doesn't eat meat) a choice between high protein or high carb diet, that they choose high carbs and then concluded feeding bears high protein diet is killing them. Now they did also find that in 5 Chinese zoos that did give the pandas high carb diets that they had giant pandas that successfully reproduced. It seems to me generalizing Giant Pandas to all bears is probably not a safe generalization, nor does this necessarily show that it gave the giant pandas longer lives. I think that the giant pandas are seemingly more ready to mate is good evidence, but there could be other variables explaining that.
- bee_rider 4y ago
  Somehow I made it to adulthood believing that Panda Bears were not actually bears. I thought it was just like Koala "bears."
  - andrewflnr 4y ago
    IIRC the reclassification of Pandas under ursidae is relatively recent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_panda#Classification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_panda#Classification
- InitialLastName 4y ago
  It would indeed be strange to generalize a study on Pandas to all bears, which is why the paragraphs after the discussion of Panda bear diets discusses similar research in sloth bears, polar bears and grizzly bears. It's a lot easier to generalize to "all bears" when you have convincing studies of 4/8 species of bears (but only, to my count, ~10% of the global bear population because there are a lot of American Black Bears).
ortusdux 4y ago
I remember the segment from the first season of Planet Earth that surprised me the most was the video of grizzlies foraging for thousands of moths just prior to hibernation. https://www.grizzlytimes.org/grizzly-moth-eating-jig https://www.grizzlytimes.org/grizzly-moth-eating-jig
Maursault 4y ago
> "There's certainly this long-standing idea that humans with Ph.D.s know a lot more than a sloth bear or a brown bear," said Robbins. Yeah! What do PhDs know, anyway?! I've always been suspicious of PhDs. It's their shifty eyes. But seriously, is it really necessary here to blame PhDs? How often are PhDs in charge of bear diets at zoos? And I can't think of even one bear that has ever published anything of significance. Sure, there are plenty of Dr. Bears, but they're mostly MDs.
teddyh 4y ago
“Look at these teeth! Look at these claws! You think we’re just supposed to eat honey and berries?!”
pyuser583 4y ago
My daughter assures me they eat fish.
shmerl 4y ago
I'm surprised this isn't a basic knowledge at this point.
chmod775 4y ago
My main takeaway from this article is that humans are apparently locking up lots of animals they don't even know how to feed properly. Yikes.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Steven420 4y ago
Terrible article and title. Anyone that knows anything about bears knows they aren't carnivores. Meat only makes up a portion of their diet and some bears eat no meat. Seems like the author has no knowledge of bears
FunnyBadger 4y ago
mgarfias 4y ago
Dogs aren’t carnivores either. That first sentence makes me question the rest of this

48 points by wglb 4y ago

Add some blueberries! Those phenolic antioxidants are great.

I wonder a bit on the "provide unlimited food and use that to determine what they should eat" - if applied to children we'd learn they should subsist entirely on a diet of candy and soda.

Brian_K_White 4y ago
It was just part of gathering data to be factored along with all other data.
dr_dshiv 4y ago
But maybe kids would sicken themselves of it if given freedom? Seems to work ok with addictive games, to let them overdo it themselves? A hard topic to study scientifically.
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> if applied to children we'd learn they should subsist entirely on a diet of candy and soda Forgot where it is, but I remember reading a study in which gradually-sweeter water was given to kids of different ages. A clear trend emerged: water became too sweet quicker for older kids. For infants, the water saturated before they stopped drinking.
tzs 4y ago
That's actually sort of been tried. See "Clara M. Davis and the wisdom of letting children choose their own diets" [1]. Briefly, Davis took a group of newly weaned infants in the 1930s and let them choose what and how much to eat from a set of 33 food items. The experiment was designed so that the caretakers would not influence the children's choices. I don't think candy and soda were among the 33 items--I believe they were all reasonably nutritious foods but with very different mixes of nutrients. All the kids ended up choosing diets from among those items that fit well with their individual nutritional needs. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1626509/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1626509/
- bscphil 4y ago
  > The foods she offered the children were varied, but all were generally thought to be healthy. Their intrinsic goodness meant that it would have been difficult for her small charges to veer too far from the nutritional straight-and-narrow. In other words, give people the illusion of choice, and they're more willing to accept your limitations. I don't see any evidence here that children (or anyone) have some kind of special insight into their own bodies' "nutritional needs" - to the extent such things are even individualized - but rather, that most people will eat a balanced diet when given the choice. E.g. none of the children became vitamin deficient because none of them chose to eat entirely one kind of food.
  - taeric 4y ago
    Agreed. It doesn't even have to be a ton of choices. Often, give kids the choice of "this is dinner, eat it or you can wait til breakfast if you aren't hungry" is surprisingly effective. And doesn't have to be a fight.
    - jay_kyburz 4y ago
      But I feel mean when I'm eating my ice cream and they are crying over in the corner.
      - taeric 4y ago
        Ha! Yeah, you do have to not be a jerk to the kids. Such that they still learn more from imitation than they do lectures or dictation. If you want them to see that "skipping dinner to have a snack" is not the norm, you have to not do it. Which, to bring it back to this thread, I find it very unlikely that unlimited access is at all a universal good idea. Might have worked on 2 of our kids. Would fail dramatically on 1 of them, though. Similarly, anyone that says that just give their pets unlimited access to food, is lucky to not have one that would just binge forever.
        eropple 4y ago
PragmaticPulp 4y ago
> if applied to children we'd learn they should subsist entirely on a diet of candy and soda. In the case of animals, this would involve providing unlimited foods similar to what would be found in their natural environment. If we gave kids their choice of naturally-occurring foods to eat, it probably wouldn’t be too terrible. My child was much more into things like broccoli and certain vegetables than I would have guessed. Introduce processed foods and all bets are off, though.
- oldgradstudent 4y ago
  > If we gave kids their choice of naturally-occurring foods to eat, it probably wouldn’t be too terrible. My child was much more into things like broccoli and certain vegetables than I would have guessed. In what sense is broccoli naturally occurring? It's a heavily artificially selected vegetable not available outside very specific regions before the 20th century. I'd assume that applies to the rest of the vegetables you've mentioned.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
anothernewdude 4y ago
My child would be eating pasta, spaghetti, broccoli, carrots and peas if that were the case.

sys32768 4y ago

I thought scientists already classified bears as omnivores? I can't recall the last time I saw bear scat that wasn't full of seeds from berries.

andrewflnr 4y ago
Since I was a child old enough to know what a bear was, I've been taught bears are omnivores. I don't know what these people are smoking... No, I do know, it's clicks.
skeeter2020 4y ago
>> I can't recall the last time I saw bear scat that wasn't full of seeds from berries. Or bear bells if it's Grizzly poop

assbuttbuttass 4y ago

Anyone who's seen bear shit knows their diet is mostly berries

skeeter2020 4y ago
That's not really true. Berries are not in season for much of the year in lots of bear habitat. Sure they do eat bearies, but are far more opportunistic in what they consume including grass, roots, herbs, insects, nuts... honey! I assume bears in Iowa have a lot of corn in their shit.
- klyrs 4y ago
  Which raises an important question: is a corn kernel a berry?

kerblang 4y ago

Clarification: It sounds like they're omnivores instead. Grizzlies will still eat you, if they're really hungry.

larsiusprime 4y ago

Not to be glib but I think the fact that bears are stereotypically depicted as eating Honey might have been the first clue. EDIT: To be fair, clicking beyond the headline, it looks like the ongoing practice at zoos has been to feed them a carnivore diet of mostly meat, which is apparently bad for them, and this article recommends otherwise, which seems sensible.

nkozyra 4y ago
They also list polar bears, which I always assumed did not have access to much vegetation for most of the year. Feeding them more fat is one thing, but that doesn't really negate their mostly carnivorous nature.
- larsiusprime 4y ago
  That's true, I had the same assumption they mostly just ate seals
  - NoGravitas 4y ago
    Right, so that's the thing, polar bears do eat (almost?) exclusively meat. But the zoos are feeding them too much lean meat, and not enough fat. You know, like seal blubber.
    - nkozyra 4y ago
      Yeah that was my point. The title is a little misleading. And in fact what they're really saying is that bears are not being fed a diet consistent with their nutritional makeup in the wild. Which is likely very true of all animals in captivity.
tsol 4y ago
These zoos need to get caught up on the latest research. I believe according to Yogi et al. their diet primarily consists of honey and campers' picnic baskets.

autokad 4y ago

I read the article and found it kind of strange. from what I understand is that they gave giant pandas (a bear that doesn't eat meat) a choice between high protein or high carb diet, that they choose high carbs and then concluded feeding bears high protein diet is killing them. Now they did also find that in 5 Chinese zoos that did give the pandas high carb diets that they had giant pandas that successfully reproduced. It seems to me generalizing Giant Pandas to all bears is probably not a safe generalization, nor does this necessarily show that it gave the giant pandas longer lives. I think that the giant pandas are seemingly more ready to mate is good evidence, but there could be other variables explaining that.

bee_rider 4y ago
Somehow I made it to adulthood believing that Panda Bears were not actually bears. I thought it was just like Koala "bears."
- andrewflnr 4y ago
  IIRC the reclassification of Pandas under ursidae is relatively recent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_panda#Classification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_panda#Classification
InitialLastName 4y ago
It would indeed be strange to generalize a study on Pandas to all bears, which is why the paragraphs after the discussion of Panda bear diets discusses similar research in sloth bears, polar bears and grizzly bears. It's a lot easier to generalize to "all bears" when you have convincing studies of 4/8 species of bears (but only, to my count, ~10% of the global bear population because there are a lot of American Black Bears).

ortusdux 4y ago

I remember the segment from the first season of Planet Earth that surprised me the most was the video of grizzlies foraging for thousands of moths just prior to hibernation. https://www.grizzlytimes.org/grizzly-moth-eating-jig https://www.grizzlytimes.org/grizzly-moth-eating-jig

Maursault 4y ago

> "There's certainly this long-standing idea that humans with Ph.D.s know a lot more than a sloth bear or a brown bear," said Robbins. Yeah! What do PhDs know, anyway?! I've always been suspicious of PhDs. It's their shifty eyes. But seriously, is it really necessary here to blame PhDs? How often are PhDs in charge of bear diets at zoos? And I can't think of even one bear that has ever published anything of significance. Sure, there are plenty of Dr. Bears, but they're mostly MDs.

teddyh 4y ago

“Look at these teeth! Look at these claws! You think we’re just supposed to eat honey and berries?!”

pyuser583 4y ago

My daughter assures me they eat fish.

shmerl 4y ago

I'm surprised this isn't a basic knowledge at this point.

chmod775 4y ago

My main takeaway from this article is that humans are apparently locking up lots of animals they don't even know how to feed properly. Yikes.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Steven420 4y ago

Terrible article and title. Anyone that knows anything about bears knows they aren't carnivores. Meat only makes up a portion of their diet and some bears eat no meat. Seems like the author has no knowledge of bears

FunnyBadger 4y ago

mgarfias 4y ago

Dogs aren’t carnivores either. That first sentence makes me question the rest of this