Vicks VapoRub is used to reintroduce orphaned bear cubs!

[Nittersing]

In the early 1980s, a Pennsylvania bear biologist named Gary Alt carried an orphaned black bear cub into a winter den, placed it beside a sleeping wild mother, and walked out. The mother woke up in the spring raising one more cub than she had given birth to. She never knew the difference.

Then Alt tried it outside the den, in spring, and the mother smelled the strange cub and killed it.

That failure is what led to the Vicks VapoRub.
Alt was the black bear biologist for the Pennsylvania Game Commission for twenty-seven years. During that time, he expanded the state's bear population from roughly three thousand to nearly fifteen thousand animals. He also dealt with a problem that every bear state faces. Orphaned cubs. A mother bear gets hit by a car, gets shot during season, gets killed in a management action, and leaves behind cubs that are too young to survive alone. The standard options were captive rearing or euthanasia. Alt wanted a third option. He wanted to give the orphan to a wild mother who was already raising her own.

The biology said it should not work. A black bear mother identifies her cubs by scent. She licks them after birth, and the chemical signature of her saliva marks them as hers. If she encounters a cub that does not carry her scent, she treats it as a threat or an intruder. Outside the den, in the active season, a mother bear that smells a strange cub will reject it. In some cases, she kills it. Alt learned this the hard way.

Inside the den was different. A hibernating mother is in a reduced metabolic state. Her senses are dampened. Her aggression is lower. Her discrimination between her own cubs and a stranger's is weaker. Alt tested the theory by opening a winter den, placing an orphaned cub beside the sleeping mother's existing litter, and backing away. The mother did not wake. The orphan nestled against her body alongside her biological cubs. When the family emerged in the spring, the mother was raising all of them. The orphan had been absorbed.

The technique worked reliably in the den. But orphaned cubs do not always appear in January. Sometimes they show up in April or May, after the mothers are already active and mobile and operating with full sensory awareness. Alt needed a way to introduce orphans to awake, alert mothers without the mother detecting the scent mismatch that would trigger rejection or killing.

He tested two approaches. In the first, he treed a mother bear and her cubs using dogs, released the orphan into the trees, and kept the mother separated from all the cubs for two to seven hours. The extended contact between the orphan and the biological cubs during the separation appeared to transfer enough shared scent that when the mother returned, she accepted the group without identifying the newcomer. The orphans were accepted.

In the second method, Alt sedated the mother, smeared Vicks VapoRub in her nostrils, and placed the orphan with her while she was unconscious. When the sedation wore off, the menthol overwhelmed her olfactory system. She could not distinguish the orphan's scent from her own cubs' scent because she could not smell anything except eucalyptus and camphor. By the time the Vicks wore off, the orphan had been in contact with the mother and siblings long enough that the scent lines had blurred. The orphans were accepted.

(From a FB post https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=122115361575271245&set=a.122097918195271245)

[Old-8643]

1. Thats very interesting, thanks for posting. n/m

[in2herbs]

2. Vicks is sometimes used to calm stallions around mares -- and it works. nt

[red dog 1]

3. Very interesting, thanks for posting.