The cold winter happens serious test for bears. Animals have to be prepared for it well: "to acquire" a sufficient reserve of fat and to equip the place for a winter dream. The bear who did not lie down in hibernation is usually doomed to death for hunger and cold, becomes an easy mark of hunters.
Training of a bear for hibernation
For a full-fledged winter dream the bear needs to save up necessary nutrients therefore especially important role is played by food. The most part of a diet of an omnivore consists of vegetable forages. Small rodents, eggs of birds, fish, larvae of ants, the remains of the hoofed animals killed with other predators – too food for a bear. To the owner of a taiga very much the cedar cones loved by it help to stock up for the winter with fat. Terms of bedding of an animal in a den are late if year was lean and the bear did not manage to stock up for the summer and autumn period with enough fat.
Very important for the clumsy forest owner to find the deaf place for a winter shelter reliably to hide for the period of hibernation. The bear uses cunning, going to a den: confuses traces, even moves back to front, makes the way through the piled trees. The outskirts of impassable swamps blocking a way windbreaks, coast of the forest rivers and lakes – places where the bear den is most often equipped. The brown owner of the wood can choose for it holes under vyvorochenny trees, a heap of brushwood. Independently dug deep earth dens or caves become a winter rookery of an animal too.
The most important for a quiet dream – silence around, dryness of a nest. Unexpected guests can disturb hibernation, then the bear should look for the new place for a den. But most often birds and wild animals avoid it, feeling presence of the owner. Usually the concern is caused by the person.
Winter bear dwelling
Having a presentiment of cold winter, bears try to lie down for the winter in deeper den, it is good to warm it. There are necessary fir-tree branches. The layers of a moss reaching sometimes half-meter height, herbs represent a laying in a winter spacious rookery. The amount of material and thickness of a laying depend on humidity: on its swamp it is required more, than in dry places. And in the spring the thick layer of a moss and hay saves from the thawing snow. A bear den gives to reliability a narrow manhole which only the experienced hunter will be able to find in the snow winter. Besides, it is often hidden in dense thickets, and to it there is an opportunity to reach only by means of the axe and a knife. Hunters sometimes met quite interesting dens. For example, the nests representing the correct form arranged on the hillocks protected from moisture. Small nadranny bark and a small amount of branches of a fir-tree formed the dwelling basis. The bottom of a plank bed was covered by a moss and fir-tree bark. The bear who was not in time to prepare to himself the place for hibernation is capable to lie down even in a haystack, remained on a forest glade. The bear sleeps in a den in different situation: having been curtailed a ball, on one side or on a back, even sometimes sitting with the head hung between paws. Body temperature of an animal during hibernation decreases slightly, breath and a warm rhythm slow down. Quite often it happens to hear that clumsy sucks a paw in a dream. Actually, he licks them during the unpleasant feelings appearing in the middle of the winter on skin of paws. In a den the brown bears carry out hibernation usually one by one. Occasionally the she-bear can turn out in her together with a last year's bear cub therefore more spacious nest is arranged. At the very beginning of winter the she-bear has from two to four absolutely blind cubs who weigh about a half of kilogram, have no wool and teeth. They are with mom a she-bear all winter, eating its milk, and leave a den bright and shaggy, but dependent bear cubs. During long thaw the animals are capable to waken and leave a rookery, and with the onset of cold weather to return back. Sometimes, that the den becomes "hereditary": several generations of bears use it as the shelter during hibernation.