Wolverine animal s bear
They do this to communicate with each other, since one male might have three or more females living in his territory, raising his kits, or babies, with him (males do help raise the babies). One of the common names for wolverines is "skunk bear" or "stink bear" because they spray various landmarks (and sometimes their enemies) with a special concoction of methylbutanoic acids (the smell of which has variously been described as "sweaty," "cheesy" and "like a barnyard") that comes from their anal gland.
"Sometimes they'll take apart the camera traps that are set up nearby, or play with loose ropes or wires."īut as difficult as they are to find in the flesh, it's not tough to find where they've been.
WOLVERINE ANIMAL S BEAR FREE
"They're wily, clever and playful - it's very hard to trap a wolverine if you're trying to catch it to kill it, but they know when a research live-trap is out and they'll return again and again for a free meal," says Watters. And just as fur trappers of old had a difficult time catching wolverines (and preventing them from robbing their traps), modern researchers have a hard time finding, following and catching them. They're nocturnal, so they're used to slinking around in the shadows - and they've been known to stalk researchers for miles without being spotted. While curious and fearless, wolverines are almost pathologically cagey. These 'Stink Bears' Are Nocturnal and Clever They've also been known to climb hills and slide down on the snow, repeatedly, just for fun." "They have crazy metabolisms and they don't hibernate, so they're always out exploring. "They can go and go and go, no matter what the terrain is like," says Rebecca Watters, executive director of the Wolverine Foundation, based in Bozeman, Montana. They're also pretty hyperactive, no matter what time of year it is - one wolverine wearing a tracking device in Grand Teton National Park was found to have walked over 500 miles (805 kilometers) in two months. Unlike a lot of other Arctic animals that deal with the long, bitter winters by either hibernating or migrating someplace balmier, a wolverine's dense, frost-resistant coat (which at one time made them a major target for fur trappers), snowshoe-like paws, and the ability to chomp through frozen meat and even bones, make it possible for them to eschew lesser animals' cold weather coping mechanisms and stay outside in the far north year-round. They'll even dig deep under the snow to kill and eat a hibernating animal.
That said, wolverines are omnivores, eating pretty much whatever their sensitive noses lead them to: ground squirrels, moose, mountain goats, carcasses buried meters under the ice and snow, bird's eggs, berries, etc. So yes, wolverines are dangerous to their fellow animals, although there's never been a documented attack on a human by a wolverine, says the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. And they do it aggressively - they've been known to fight a wolf or even a bear off a kill. Weighing in at between 22 and 40 pounds (10 and 18 kilograms) - the males are larger than the females - they defend territories greater than those presided over grizzly bears (between 40 and 372 miles ). About the size of a mid-size dog, but resembling a small bear, a wolverine is a weasel of paradox. Perhaps a better question is, what don't they eat.