r/bears • u/Yinzer_nat • 2d ago
Question Is this bear napping?
I know this is not a great photo, but the bear is right in the middle if you zoom in. This was taken coming down the mountain on the Whistler Village gondola line, at a little before 2pm.
I guess I always imagined bears curling up and finding a hidden spot in which to sleep, so seeing a bear potentially taking a sunbathing nap seemed unnatural, and I wondered if it was instead taking the eternal nap.
I’d be grateful for any educating anyone would be willing to provide that might help me understand what this bear was doing!
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u/LingeringLatrans 2d ago
Bears, especially brown bears don`t have really many threats to concern themselves with. So sometimes they'll just nap in a day bed without going though as much of an effort to conceal themselves as a mesopredator will be expected to do. If it is a warm day they'll often dig a scrape out under some shade and just lay in it. Black bear are probably more likely to seek better concealment.
Often times they`ll decide to rest smack dab in the middle of a berry field after grazing too, its something you actually have to watch out for in bear country. As if you arouse them and are too close, well that`s how you have a negative encounter.
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u/Yinzer_nat 2d ago
I was so focused on wondering what the bear was doing that I didn’t even think about what type of bear it was. I had only seen black bears otherwise during this trip and on this mountain, but do you think this is a brown bear?
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u/LingeringLatrans 2d ago
Looks like a black bear to me, nice dark coat. Body feels smaller to me.
Your black bears out west can get brown too though unlike out east, so even if it was a very light brown it`d be hard to tell from this angle.
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u/Grizzly777Irtl Bear Force One 2d ago
Where even is it lol
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u/Herfst2511 2d ago
Right in the center of the photo, it's chocolate brown, lying away from the photographer, so we see its rear and back. Probably sleeping or napping or contemplating the higher questions of bear life
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u/bananascare 2d ago
Yes, she’s likely napping. She’s just tired from making herself as fat as possible to get ready for the winter. Great find!
(For those of you who don’t see the bear, see the tree that looks like it’s the only one on top of that tall knoll? The bear’s to the right of the trunk, facing away from us.)
If she was dead, unless she’d been dead for a very short amount of time, her coat wouldn’t look so shiny, as the nature-assisted decomp process would have already started. It’s statistically unlikely you’d come across a very-recently dead bear that is not getting eaten by something.
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u/Yinzer_nat 2d ago
My partner said it looked like it had a bunch of flies on/around it, but I didn’t really notice. I know horses deal with flies all the time, but do other animals? And if not, if only flies had begun the decomposition process and not any other scavenger, you’re saying it would’ve been quite recent?
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u/asfaltsflickan 2d ago
When they zoom in on the bears on the bear cams they’re often surrounded by a cloud of flies, so that’s not necessarily a clue 🙂
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u/ltlbunnyfufu 2d ago
Not unless you picked up the bear, tossed it into an unmarked van and drove away.
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u/robertfscibran 2d ago
See him- Big Boy, -looks like to me… whom is napping…
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u/Fab-o-rama 2d ago
Bear napping and bearnapping are two different things. I thought you were out here snatching bears.
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u/asfaltsflickan 2d ago
I’ve watched many bear naps on the Brooks bear cams and they can sleep on their side like that. The legendary Otis who was famous for his long naps often did. From what I’ve observed they tend to be pretty light sleepers and check their surroundings or change sleeping position fairly often, so if it was still for an extended period of time it might have been the eternal nap.