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The "Bear" Facts

Behavior & Senses

Black Bear Behavior

Bears are solitary by nature, except when in family groups or pairings during the mating season.

Bears will congregate in areas of high food density, such as oak stands or berry patches. These groupings happen more because one bear cannot defend such a rich food source from competitors than because they enjoy the company.

While bears may defend a food resource, in general, bears are not territorial in that they do not defend a “specific area” from intrusion by other bears.

The area they inhabit in search of food, water, and adequate cover is called a home range.

• Individual bear home ranges may overlap.

• The size of a home range may vary each season and year depending on food availability, the sex, age, and reproductive status of the bear, and bear population density.

• During major droughts and mast failures, bears will explore new areas in search of food.

• In Florida, male bears typically have home ranges of 50 to 120 square miles; female ranges generally are 10 to 25 square miles.

• Bears have the ability to navigate homeward from unfamiliar areas.

• Bears have been able to return to their original home range (up to 168 miles away) after having been relocated.

Black Bear Senses

Vision: Black bears have good eyesight, possibly equal to humans, and recent research has found that they have color vision.

Hearing: They have acute hearing.

Smelling: They have an excellent sense of smell (bears can smell more than a mile away!). Their rumored poor vision may be due to their reliance on their sense of smell, as well as behavior.

Black bear are curious animals. They often do a lot of sniffing, and may stand up on hind legs to get a better view and smell their surroundings. This is normal non-threatening behavior and is not a sign of aggression.

Sounds: Bears are quiet creatures, but occasionally they make sounds to communicate.

• Cubs bawl and moan when distressed, and make a sort of grunting purr when suckling.

• Sows communicate with their young by grunts or moans and can send their cubs up trees for safety, or have them follow her.

• An aggressive bear does not growl like a dog. Instead, they will stare, protrude their lower lip, and flatten their ears. If the source of their unease remains, they may slap the ground, "huff" or "blow", and snap or "gnash" their jaws.

• If these behaviors don't scare off the source of their unease, the bear may bluff charge or fully charge.

Bears respond to people as they would other bears. Understanding the various responses and ways bears communicate can help people to coexist with bears.

 Markings: Black bears bite and claw marks onto trees between 5 and 7 feet high, both conifers and hardwoods, but the reason for such markings is unknown. Marks occur along defined game trails, with the mark facing the trail. Often bears rub against these trees as well. Four untested theories are:

1. the marks are related to male dominance hierarchies,

2. marks communicate breeding status to ensure males and females are synchronized successfully for breeding,

3. marking territory boundaries among females may mimic territorial behavior, and

4. marks may serve to help orient bears in new or little used areas (marking increases when a bear enters a new areas).

Most likely there are several reasons why black bears mark trees.