Female and male black bears cannot tolerate being around each other except when they breed.

The bear diet at other times varies, often leaning heavily towards protein in the spring, when they will consume small animals, unprotected moose or deer offspring, and animals that died over the winter. As the weather warms up, they move on to shoots, grasses, and other vegetation, and then the berry bonanza in summer.

Female bears also mate in the summer, and then promptly kick the male out and never see him again. But in one of Mother Nature’s unique little provisions which show how well she understands life on our sometimes hostile planet, actual implantation of the fertilized bear egg is time-delayed, and doesn’t occur until early Fall. Gestation, which takes ten weeks, is put off until there is more likelihood of survival after birth. Otherwise, bear cubs would be born as the cold strikes and the bear is not yet ready. With that pause in the reproductive cycle, black bear cubs are born in snug winter dens, and are mobile, and ready to face the world, by the time Spring arrives.