What's for Dinner?

Ants, fruits, plants and moose meat. These are a few of grizzly bears' favorite foods.

A team of scientists from the University of Alberta examined 665 feces collected from 18 grizzly bears over a period of three years in Canada.

"Alberta bears have remarkably diverse diets," said co-author of the study Mark Boyce, a biologist at the University of Alberta.  "They'll eat just about anything."

Much is known about what bears in mountainous areas eat but little is known of the diets of grizzly bears living in boreal forests also used by humans.

During the early spring, the grizzlies fed mostly on the roots of sweet vetch plants, while in the late spring they preyed on ungulates with moose being the most common of these hooved-animal meals. Other ungulates included white-tailed and mule deer and elk. Smaller animals like rodents, insects and birds were also on the spring menu. Green vegetation dominated early summer diets and as fruit ripened in early August, berries such were added to the bears' menu.

The diverse diets of the Alberta grizzly bear helps cushion them against climate change and other vagaries of the environment, Boyce said.

The research was recently published in the Journal of Mammalogy.

--      LiveScience Staff

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Credit: S. Fallon