Digicam collar footage is unveiling the secret lives of Andean bears (Tremarctos ornatus), South The US’s easiest surviving ursid. A wild Andean bear in Peru was caught eating soil or clay, relationship females and even cannibalizing a dead bear cub.

“It’s so stressful to glimpse an Andean bear,” says Ruthmery Pillco Huarcaya, a natural world biologist at Amazon Conservation, a nongovernmental group in Cusco, Peru. Scientists estimate there are fewer than 20,000 left in the wild. “And it’s even more challenging to glimpse what they are doing.” Even though the bears are deep brown or dark with incandescent spectacled faces and would possibly perhaps perhaps well weigh up to 340 pounds, they’re complex to space in the dense, steep forests of the Andes.

Zoos and sanctuaries offer some perception into the bears’ mannerisms but now now not mighty. It’s their habits in the wild that’s fundamental for informing conservation selections. The Andean bear is listed as susceptible on the Global Union for Conservation of Nature purple checklist, and the species is beneath threat from unlawful poaching, habitat loss, mining and climate switch (SN: 4/30/24). Now, collars equipped with video cameras are offering up some clues into the bear’s natural habits, researchers account December 4 in Ecology and Evolution.

The challenge “is improbable, and it’s weird,” says Mauricio Vela-Vargas, a natural world biologist at the Wildlife Conservation Society in Bogotá, Columbia, who wasn’t inflamed by the evaluation. “For the main time, now we bear got records that affirms rather loads of hypotheses.”

Bears bear lengthy been embedded in Andean folklore. In a Quechua village by Cusco, Pillco grew up paying attention to her grandmother’s tales about ukukus — half human, half bear demigods who climbed a Peruvian glacier to direct water relief to nearby human communities. She constantly wanted to search more regarding the right bears, the right ukukus, dwelling nearby.

Pillco now leads the initiative to place camera collars to Andean bears across Peru’s Kosñipata Valley. Sitting relief and having a glimpse thru videos also can seem easy, but gazing the footage is factual the tip of the iceberg. Earlier than additionally they would possibly be able to comb thru the footage, Pillco’s employees needed to in discovering bears, get them and place the collars.

The assignment wasn’t uncomplicated. The valley’s terrain is rugged and inhospitable to hikers, says Andrew Whitworth, an ecologist specializing in tropical biodiversity at Osa Conservation, a nonprofit in Costa Rica. He had by no methodology seen an Andean bear ahead of. Whitworth says he joined Pillco on the challenge, intrigued by “the fun of doing something that’s surely complex and a runt bit bit insane.”

To get the bears, Pillco requested a native mechanic to assist invent traps — substantial metal containers designed to grasp Andean bears and ping the researcher’s phones.

“Usually we had false alarms, however the main time was a corpulent experience,” Pillco says.

One night, they’d sent a area assistant on a lengthy hike thru the rugged forest to bait a entice shut to where they suspected a bear was wandering. On the assistant’s methodology relief, the entire evaluation employees’s phones began pinging ‘TRAP ALERT’. Pillco was convinced the assistant had done something imperfect. She grilled him: “Did you shut the door?” Did you feature it well?” The assistant assured her that all the pieces was done factual. Unexcited, she requested him to bound and take a look at.

“He went relief, and the bear was there! … It was factual looking ahead to the bait to be build apart in,” she says. Whitmore, who was nearly too sick to pass at the time, was so overjoyed he purchased off the bed and was among the main to advance at the scene.

Pillco and Whitmore first and fundamental tried out Crittercams, little GoPro–enjoy cameras that hook onto separate collars, on two bears they bear been in a feature to get. They bear been at closing in a feature to hook up one other bear with a camera collar — a assorted device that integrates video, GPS feature and movement tempo.

This bear wore the camera collar for four months. Then, the researchers needed to retrieve the device.

“That was one of many toughest issues,” Whitmore says. The employees would possibly perhaps perhaps well originate the collar remotely. But it surely didn’t tumble off factual away. After they’d a general feature, the employees, which included locals who knew the terrain, backpacked out to retrieve it. They ventured thru the thick cloud forests, crossed a river by constructing their bear bridge and walked for days till they reached the factual home. Every person combed the bottom — at the side of Pillco’s search canines Ukuku. But it surely was a native guide who stumbled on it first.

The collar footage printed Andean bear habits by no methodology recorded ahead of. The bear consumed previously undocumented meals enjoy a abolish of stinging infuriate plant, a wooly monkey and a dead bear cub, and he spent seven days mating with a female bear (with breaks, obviously). And regardless that Andean bears are opinion to be rather isolated creatures, this one bear encountered others, usually peacefully, steadily.

The footage is fundamental now now not factual for scientists but to boot the native communities, which bear mighty of the land where Andean bears dwell. As folks in these communities try and preserve swaths of land, intellectual what more or much less berries and crops Andean bears desire to nibble on helps land managers settle what species to develop. Pillco will be presenting her videos at an upcoming bear festival and working with nearby colleges to engage youngsters with the forests and bears that encompass them.

“We’re surely having a glimpse to invent conservation ambassadors with neighborhood folks, because I possess it’s key to empower them” to offer protection to their land, Pillco says. “Because I will bound, my group can bound, however the communities are going to protect there.”