2y ago

Do bears in the wild seriously subsist only on berries and salmon?

How are bears so huge? If I ate nothing but berries and salmon I'd probably be really slender.

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You might be underestimating how nutrient-rich a steady diet of salmon can be.
According to a ranger in Denali I spoke to: It depends on where the bears live in relation to the food. Coastal grizzlies are much larger because they have plentiful fat and protein sources like salmon. Inland grizzlies that live near glacial streams don't have that food source and subsist on larger quantities of berries and the like and are noticeably smaller than their coastal counterparts.
So the food sources directly impact the sizes of the animals within the same species. The grizzly I saw in Denali appeared no larger than well-fed black bears I have encountered in the Sierra Nevada range. I say appeared, because it very well may have been larger. But it certainly didn't look like the ones near the coast.
Kind of an answer, but I'm not a bear biologist.
- Salmon don't typically run year round so it is a seasonal food source.
  
  Coincidentally, grizzly bears don't typically run year round, so it's a perfect matchup.
  
  Salmon runs are in the fall right when bears are trying to bulk up for winter hibernation.
  Spring they mostly subsist on roots, grasses, and other vegetation and insects, and summer is when the berries ripen so they take advantage of that.
I think comparing our diets to bears does not make sense at all ... our systems are completely different.
A bear can eat massive amounts of food in a short period of time, gain lots of weight and then fast for several months and go to sleep and do nothing.
If we tried the same thing, we'd probably go into cardiac arrest, or some serious intestinal problems if we ate too much too fast in a short amount of time ... and then we'd ruin our kidneys and liver and probably die of starvation if we went on fast after.
- eat massive amounts of food in a short period of time, gain lots of weight and then fast for several months and go to sleep and do nothing.
  You better believe I've TRIED! 😆
Depends on how much you ate, but similar to us, bears can be omnivores (though they tend to eat more meat type stuff): They'll eat whatever they can, which can definitely include a lot of berries and fish, but they also eat nuts, roots, insects, honey, carrion, etc.
- Just the bear necessities
  
  Dammit, now everyone is singing!
- Depending on the bear species. Most black bears eat more vegetative foods than meats. Many bears are not strong hunters and tend to prefer to scavenge their meat. The exception being fishing.
Bears tend to eat larger portions.
- And more frequently .
If you ate berries and salmon in the quantities bears do, you would absolutely not be very slender. That's a diet of protein, fat, and sugars.
- I mean, all diets are pretty much protein, fat, and sugar...but bears are eating nearly 20000 calories/day in the fall.
  
  It astounds me how animals find all that food out in nature. When I go out in nature all I find are non-fruit-bearing trees and bushes and well manicured lawns.
  how they're able to find 20,000 calories a day 🤯
Im concerned with folks nutritional competency. Salmon has a lot of fat
- That's not how fat works at all. Adipose tissue is formed to store energy (calories) and it does not matter what the source of that energy is. It can be saturated fat, unsaturated fat, various forms of carbs... when eating more calories than used the excess is saved for later in adipose tissue.
What do elephants eat? Whales?
- Right?? surely they must be eating whales when we're not watching. Because there's no way elephants could be that huge from eating peanuts.
If you want to body build you eat that as well
- BeefCAKE!!
- And potatoes, and brown rice.
I've heard that bears feeding on salmon will eat only the high-value parts of the salmon and abandon the rest to scavengers, so I can believe it. More efficient when there's a lot.
They eat moths when up above vegetation line
Bears also eat wild fruits, roots of some plants and lots of nuts (high in fats and protiens). They also are very oppourtunistic scavengers, rarely hunting outside of fishing.

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