Loose Brown bears They are one of the largest animals on the Iberian Peninsula, males can weigh as much as 200 kg. They are agile and have a keen sense of smell and good hearing.
Now an international group of researchers in which the National Museum of Natural Sciences (MNCN-CSIC) participates has published a study in the journal Animal Behavior that confirms that females of brown bearbear bears, choose ossed close to their mating area when pregnant. This decision reduces the risk of infanticidephenomenon that causes males kill offspring of their own kindwhen the female the will dare with breeding in the spring of the following year. These results are important for the conservation of this species, since the hunt brown oso males residents in these areas and their abandonment ossed by females in the presence of human threat can affect offspring survival.
“One of the leading causes of offspring mortality in carnivores is infanticideTherefore, this phenomenon has a great influence on their behavior,” explains Vincenzo Penteriani, researcher at the MNCN-CSIC. “In the case of women brown bone One of the evolutionary strategies they have developed to reduce the risk of infanticide is to mate with different males, as this increases the chance that if he interbreeds with one of them, he will be the father of their offspring. However, for this to really work, it is necessary that both females and males are nearby the following year when the female leaves the den with her offspring, and this is exactly what we wanted to verify in the study,” says the scientist. .
The study collected GPS data from 43 tagged bears, 25 males and 18 females, from populations in Slovakia, Romania and Finland. This data shows, in the case of females, the area they visit during the mating season, the location of the cave in which they give birth to the puppies and the area they frequent after birth, a time when there is a risk that they infanticide is older. In the case of the malesobserved the area they visited during mating season and fidelity to this area the following year.
The female brown bear’s strategy to prevent males from killing their cubs
“The results confirm that the females with babies “They choose to stay in the area where they mate and the males stay there for the entire year after mating,” said Alejandra Zarzo, also a researcher at the MNCN-CSIC. “This has important implications for the conservation of this species. On the one hand, if the human presence bothers the females when they leave it will dare with the puppies, they may leave the area, increasing the risk of encountering a male who is not the father of these offspring. It is therefore necessary to take measures to protect mating areas and areas close to the coast ossed preventing the entry of tourists, photographers and other human disturbances that cause these females to decide to move to another area because they feel unsafe. This point is very important in the case of the populations of the Cantabrian Mountains, since every year it is females who move away from the ossed by people who get too close,” the researcher concludes.