The Art of Gluttony: Bears and their Vittles
of mating season, the bears have less appetite. This is one of the poorest seasons for quality foods, and it is a good time for the bears to concentrate on their other biological urges. After the great mating wars are over in early summer, insects become more plentiful and the early berries show up. The bears settle down for a routine of serious munching to gain back the weight they lost in the spring. In the Rockies, bears take advantage of the seasonal effect of altitude. They start eating forbs low on the mountain and follow the belt of spring greening until they are high up. About this time, the berries are starting to ripen at the low elevations, so they go back down and follow the zone of berry-ripening up the mountain.
In late summer to early autumn, the appetite of bears goes into high gear. They become ravenously hungry and spend nearly all their waking time eating, taking in as many as 20,000 calories a day. This phenomenon is called "hyperphagia," and appears to be controlled by endorphins, the same hormones that act as narcotics in humans. The bears put on pounds by the day and if all goes well, they will be rippling and rolling with fat by September. They are at their maximum weight this time of year. If Mother Nature has been kind to them they will be quite fat and happy and looking fine and sleek in their newly-grown winter coats. If not, their mood will be one of grim desperation as they fight to gain enough calories to survive before winter sets in. In the U.S., human fatalities due to grizzlies tend to take place towards the end of the hyperphagia period; bears that have not obtained enough to eat are likely to be very short-tempered and dangerous. The early fall is the prime feeding time as this is when the best, most nutritious bear foods are at their most available; the late berries and seasonal fruits (technically called "soft mast") and the many kinds of nuts and acorns (known as "hard mast"). Hyperphagia is a fine-tuned evolutionary mechanism that allows bears to take best advantage of a highly abundant but short-lived food supply.
Of course, if it's a bad year and the mast crops fail, the poor desperate bears tend to come flocking into inhabited areas to get some of that abundant food
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