4 ms·

Is it just me or does that IHOP dumpster bear [1] look obese? If they're used to fattening up for the winter and going into torpor to burn off that fat, what ha

Is it just me or does that IHOP dumpster bear [1] look obese? If they're used to fattening up for the winter and going into torpor to burn off that fat, what happens when there's enough food to last them all winter too? Are we essentially just breeding a bunch of really fat bears? It seems we need to get an ursidae anti-obesity program started ASAP. [1] https://cdn.tahoedailytribune.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2022/12/IHOP-Bear-1024x768.jpg https://cdn.tahoedailytribune.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/5...

celrod 4y ago
I'd read before that many mammals lose more weight than bears during hibernation, but the weight they lose is a much more even distribution of different body tissues. There's a lot of research on how bears are capable of burning almost entirely fat, while other animals would lose a lot of muscle and bone as well. A bear that isn't hibernating, IIRC, doesn't have this ability, so primarily fattening up in preparation for winter -- because that's all you need and it is more efficient -- may pose a problem if they start losing a lot of other tissues. But, presumably, if they were to lose more weight in winter be being awake than asleep, they'd just go to sleep. So they're probably not losing much more non-fat tissue. Bears AFAIK don't suffer ill-health effects like humans do from obesity. It's natural for a bear, so heart disease and diabetes would've been strongly selected against in bears, while suffering approximately 0 negative selective pressure among our ancestors.
- meindnoch 4y ago
  >It's natural for a bear, so heart disease and diabetes would've been strongly selected against in bears, while suffering approximately 0 negative selective pressure among our ancestors. It certainly helps that bears rarely live past 20 years in the wild, and they start reproducing at age 3-6.
- dmurray 4y ago
  > But, presumably, if they were to lose more weight in winter be being awake than asleep, they'd just go to sleep. This is quite a leap of faith, that they can do this calculation. There's some kind of feedback mechanism going on with "if food is plentiful at a certain time, don't go to sleep", and evolution may have optimized this to avoid losing weight in typical scenarios, but evolution doesn't perform that well in outlier situations.
willcipriano 4y ago
Looks like a typical, pre hibernation, fat bear: https://explore.org/meet-the-bears https://explore.org/meet-the-bears The lady in the background has a jacket on, so that's not weird. Have to see what he looks like in spring time.
bluedino 4y ago
Have you seen how fat squirrels have been getting the past few years?

celrod 4y ago

I'd read before that many mammals lose more weight than bears during hibernation, but the weight they lose is a much more even distribution of different body tissues. There's a lot of research on how bears are capable of burning almost entirely fat, while other animals would lose a lot of muscle and bone as well. A bear that isn't hibernating, IIRC, doesn't have this ability, so primarily fattening up in preparation for winter -- because that's all you need and it is more efficient -- may pose a problem if they start losing a lot of other tissues. But, presumably, if they were to lose more weight in winter be being awake than asleep, they'd just go to sleep. So they're probably not losing much more non-fat tissue. Bears AFAIK don't suffer ill-health effects like humans do from obesity. It's natural for a bear, so heart disease and diabetes would've been strongly selected against in bears, while suffering approximately 0 negative selective pressure among our ancestors.

meindnoch 4y ago
>It's natural for a bear, so heart disease and diabetes would've been strongly selected against in bears, while suffering approximately 0 negative selective pressure among our ancestors. It certainly helps that bears rarely live past 20 years in the wild, and they start reproducing at age 3-6.
dmurray 4y ago
> But, presumably, if they were to lose more weight in winter be being awake than asleep, they'd just go to sleep. This is quite a leap of faith, that they can do this calculation. There's some kind of feedback mechanism going on with "if food is plentiful at a certain time, don't go to sleep", and evolution may have optimized this to avoid losing weight in typical scenarios, but evolution doesn't perform that well in outlier situations.

willcipriano 4y ago

Looks like a typical, pre hibernation, fat bear: https://explore.org/meet-the-bears https://explore.org/meet-the-bears The lady in the background has a jacket on, so that's not weird. Have to see what he looks like in spring time.

bluedino 4y ago

Have you seen how fat squirrels have been getting the past few years?