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What Should You Do When the Bear Is Cinnamon?
Black bears have black fur, right? It’s there in the name.
“In the eastern part of North America, where I grew up, we have American black bears, and they’re only black,” said Emily Puckett, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Memphis.
People are even warned with a color-coded aphorism about how to behave during a bear encounter: “If it’s black, fight back; if it’s brown, lie down; if it’s white, say good night.”
The American black bear, Ursus americanus, did not get the memo when that saying was circulated: It comes in a variety of shades, including blond and cinnamon. The cinnamon bear is a U. americanus that wears a reddish brown coat and can look strikingly similar to grizzlies and other brown bears of the species Ursus arctos.
Recently, Dr. Puckett and colleagues uncovered the mutation that gave rise to this cinnamon situation millenniums ago, which potentially gave some bears an evolutionary edge. The scientists also discovered a mutation responsible for the amber coat of the grizzly. Their findings were published in the journal Current Biology on Friday.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/16/science/cinnamon-black-bear-mutation.html
“In the eastern part of North America, where I grew up, we have American black bears, and they’re only black,” said Emily Puckett, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Memphis.
People are even warned with a color-coded aphorism about how to behave during a bear encounter: “If it’s black, fight back; if it’s brown, lie down; if it’s white, say good night.”
The American black bear, Ursus americanus, did not get the memo when that saying was circulated: It comes in a variety of shades, including blond and cinnamon. The cinnamon bear is a U. americanus that wears a reddish brown coat and can look strikingly similar to grizzlies and other brown bears of the species Ursus arctos.
Recently, Dr. Puckett and colleagues uncovered the mutation that gave rise to this cinnamon situation millenniums ago, which potentially gave some bears an evolutionary edge. The scientists also discovered a mutation responsible for the amber coat of the grizzly. Their findings were published in the journal Current Biology on Friday.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/16/science/cinnamon-black-bear-mutation.html
4 replies
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= new reply since forum marked as read
He showed up one day looking for a friend. We think he was a yearling cub that had been sent off on his own by his mother. I was tempted to pet him but those claws were kind of intimidating.
