When a dead whale laundry ashore , it ’s a meaty bounty for whatever carnivores happen to discover it . investigator were surprised to find brown bears and wolves , two predators that do n’t normally get along , sharing a whale carcass for more than four months . And they have the photos to prove it .
On May 5 2010 , a 41 foot all in humpback whale giant washed onshore in Alaska ’s Glacier Bay National Park . Once the carcass was discovered , researchers Tania M. Lewis of theNational Park Serviceand Diana J.R. Lafferty of theCarnivore Ecology Laboratoryat Mississippi State University deploy a few camera ambush nearby to see how the monolithic brute would be consumed . One camera took a photo every 15 instant for 90 days . The second one was triggered by a apparent motion sensor . Together , the researchers had more than 10,000 photos to centre over .
Those pic allowed Lewis and Lafferty to document , for the first time , the interactions among the scavenger that feed on the corpse , led by the two magnificent carnivores seen in the photo above : brown bear and wolves .
For four month , the carcase provided a rich beginning of pith for both carnivore . Altogether , between one-half and three quarters of the human body and blubber was consumed by bear , savage , and bald eagle before the carcass floated away in early September . The bears and Friedrich August Wolf continued to visit occasionally for two eld , gnawing on the remaining bones and scraps of avoirdupois through at least November of 2012 . Lewis and Lafferty put out their determination of late in the journalUrsus .
Brown bears are usually solitary , though they do occasionally aggregate around especially large intellectual nourishment sources , such as dead whales and declamatory salmon run . What ’s uncommon , however , is to see brownish bears deal with other carnivore . They usually drive forth other predators , including black bears and diametrical bears . That ’s why it ’s so interesting that this carcass was repeatedly visited by a battalion of skirt chaser as well .
We saw little grounds of aggression between species — no instances of wolves attempting to give the sack brown bear and few example of brown bears terminate Hugo Wolf .
… dark-brown bears were present in > 50 % of the pic with wolves , indicating some level of tolerance . Smith et al . ( 2003 ) document brown bears and savage feed and go together on several social occasion at abundant Salmon River flow in Alaska . We observed similar permissiveness between multiple brown bear and 7 members of a savage multitude sharing a humpback whale carcass and exhibiting similar diel traffic pattern for [ more than ] 4 months . Our results provide brook evidence that the oftenness and severity of bear – wolf battle may decrease at heavy - magnitude food resources .
Lewis and Lafferty suspect that the gossamer copiousness of meat and blubber offered up by the lifeless giant allowed the bears and woman chaser to coexist relatively peacefully . In fact , three of the photos they retrieved from their tv camera traps unwrap bears and wolves feast olfactory organ - to - olfactory organ .
A browned bear ’s typeface is covered with fat :
Another brownish bear feeds on the decaying hulk :
The wolf mob get a sojourn :
Five bears caught feed together , an infrequent occurrence :
The unusual accumulation of both predators provided tourists with splendid wildlife viewing opportunities :
A pair of wolf pups discover the carcass :
A bear and a wolf scavenging together :
[ Ursus ]
All photos via Lewis & Lafferty / National Park Service / US Dept of the Interior
AnimalsEcologyWolvesZoology
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