compilation of some of the clips to its website earlier this week<\/a>, beginning with the wolf scene. In other clips, viewers see a bear\u2019s muzzle bobbing as it goes for a walk or crosses a river. There are shots of bears wrestling, hanging out and eating together.<\/p>\n\u201cWe\u2019re actually able to get a window into their daily life,\u201d Vincent said.<\/p>\n
Charles Robbins, a WSU professor and the founder of WSU\u2019s Bear Research, Education and Conservation Center, said the cameras represent just one way technology has transformed wildlife biology since he started working on bears 40 years ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m from an age where we used to go out and wave antennaes around,\u201d Robbins said.<\/p>\n
Now DNA analysis allows scientists to learn an animal\u2019s family history. Blood and hair samples can show them what a bear ate last month. GPS collars can beam an animal\u2019s location data to a computer miles away.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can just look in great detail at the life of wild animals now,\u201d Robbins said. \u201cWhen I went through school, we weren\u2019t even thinking of those possibilities. It\u2019s been a true revolution.\u201d<\/p>\n
The idea of following grizzlies in the Arctic for a full season grew out of discussions about polar bears. They spend much of the year on sea ice and hunt seals, but Robbins said scientists were concerned about how polar bears will do as climate change melts ice and forces them to spend more time on land.<\/p>\n
Robbins said some feel that since grizzly bears survive on terrestrial foods in the Arctic, polar bears should be able to make do for part of the year. A short study of the how the two species fared in late August and early September \u2013 a time when polar bears are forced onto land \u2013 found that polar bears lost weight while grizzlies either maintained or gained small amounts of weight.<\/p>\n
That led to the idea of following grizzlies from May to October, the full range of time they\u2019re out hunting and foraging. Scientists want to know how the bears are using their habitat and how the omnivores shift between their varied food sources \u2013 meat, berries, roots.<\/p>\n
Using cameras eliminates some of the guesswork, Vincent said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the past, where we\u2019re just relying on GPS locations, we\u2019re really having to infer what\u2019s happening. These video collars allow us to see what they\u2019re eating, what they\u2019re doing,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Researchers have attached cameras to bears in the past, including to polar bears in the Arctic, but there have been issues with battery life and a lack of memory, Vincent said.<\/p>\n
Her cameras came from Germany, and they were made to withstand the sort of abuse you\u2019d expect from the wilds of Alaska.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey have to stand up to the hard knock life of a bear,\u201d Vincent said. \u201cThey\u2019re fighting, going through water. They\u2019re pretty durable. One of them was actually shot by a hunter this year and the camera still worked.\u201d<\/p>\n
Each camera had space for up to 17 hours of footage, which translates to an astounding number of 5-second clips.<\/p>\n
They aren\u2019t all winners. Whiskers have a way of obscuring the lens. So does mud. There\u2019s no way to tell a bear to make sure the lens stays clean.<\/p>\n
The good clips surely make up for the bad. Vincent likes the surprises, and she likes seeing how bears interact. She recalled seeing one male and female pair that hung out for nearly two months, hunting and eating together.<\/p>\n
She said they\u2019re \u201cstill in the quite early stages of getting through the video,\u201d but some findings already jump out. They have started mapping where bears are eating caribou and moose carcasses. She thinks it\u2019s possible people in the past have overlooked just how many carcasses the bruins are eating, in part because they gobble them up quickly.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese bears are able to consume a carcass in a pretty short amount of time,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Roots are a major part of their diet. Vincent said the video showed the bears ate roots throughout the year. But they didn\u2019t always come by them honestly.<\/p>\n
Instead of finding roots on their own, some bears have learned to let smaller mammals do the legwork for them.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were raiding vole caches,\u201d Vincent said. \u201cThe voles had stored up roots and the bears were smart enough to not have to look for them themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The clip with the wolves made Ellery Vincent jump out of her chair. It begins in the dark.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":524833,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[79,201],"class_list":["post-524832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=524832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524832\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/524833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=524832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=524832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=524832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}