Massive black bear caught on camera in Durango
Oct 22, 2024, 3:21 PM | Updated: 3:37 pm
One Colorado bear is making it known that he is prepared to hibernate.
Although black bears aren’t necessarily uncommon in Durango, one captured on camera stood out from the rest. Why? To quote Colorado Parks and Wildlife Southwest Region, “He’s a thicc boi!”. CPW SW posted the footage of the unusually massive animal making preparations for hibernation to its social media channels on Friday.
Credit: Colorado Parks and Wildlife Southwest Region
In a series of four tweets, which included one photo and three videos, CPW SW remarked, “We thought we had seen really fat Durango bears before. But this one takes the cake. It also probably ate the cake. Every cake.” The post has over 5,000 likes and 235,000 views.
Although the post noted the video was taken in the town in the southwestern corner of the state near the New Mexico border, it didn’t specify the exact area.
Typically speaking, black bears enter hibernation in Colorado at the beginning of November, according to the Colorado State Publications Blog. Leading up to that point in a state called hyperphagia, the bears take 20 hours out of their day to eat somewhere around 20,000 calories to prepare for the winter months, when their food sources of insects, grasses, berries and nuts become sparse.
One of the videos captures the “thicc boi” rooting around, presumably in search of more food, and the caption accompanying the video begs the question, “Genuinely need to know how much more this black bear thinks he needs to eat before finding a den this year?”
As research from CPW notes, Durango’s newest celebrity will utilize its extra fat during hibernation, when its heart rate and metabolism will slow by 50 to 60 percent and its heart rate by 12 percent. This typically lasts around 200 days, and the bear will likely not eat, drink or relieve itself.
If nothing else, it appears that the bears of Durango are getting their fill. This is proven by a similar situation, in which a black bear — characterized as an “absolute unit” — was found under the deck of a home in the western part of the town on September 19.
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