Through the eyes of the Andean bear: Camera collar insights into the life of a threatened South American Ursid

Abstract

Due to Andean bears' propensity for inhabiting challenging environments and terrain, their wild ecology remains poorly understood, especially when compared to other members of the Ursidae family. In one of the steepest, wettest regions of the Andes, the Kosñipata Valley of southeastern Peru, we attached and retrieved camera-borne collars on three wild free-ranging Andean bears. From just one longer term camera collar deployed on a single individual over a period of 4 months, we observed a variety of rare or previously undocumented natural history observations. These include courtship and mating behaviors, social interactions with conspecifics, novel dietary items of previously unrecorded fruit consumption, cannibalism, potential infanticide, the sole documented case of primate consumption, and evidence of geophagy. The wealth of novel natural history insights gained from just 4 months of camera collar data of this poorly studied species has elucidated numerous avenues warranting further investigation.

Keywords: Manu; Ursidae; cannibalism; spectacled bear; technology; telemetry.

FIGURE 1

Notable events captured by the longer term camera collar. (a) Andean bear fitted with the VERTEX camera collar (photograph by Ian Rock). (b–d) Still captures from videos retrieved from the camera: (b) feeding on a bear cub carcass on November 16, 2023, at 4:58 pm. (c) Playfully interacting in the canopy with a female bear on March 17, 2024, at 7:00 am. (d) Feeding on the leg of a woolly monkey in the canopy on March 11, 2024, at 3:00 pm. The arrow is pointing to the hand of the primate.

FIGURE 2

Map of the GPS locations recorded by the collared bear, accompanied by screen grabs documenting various events over the 4‐month period in the Kosñipata Valley. (a) Feeding on a clump of clay (geophagy) on January 10 at 4:00 pm (1360 m a.s.l.). (b) Feeding on the carcass of another Andean bear in the canopy on January 1 at 7:00 am (2198 m a.s.l.). (c) Observing the Kosñipata River from a canopy gap in the lower montane forest (1200 m a.s.l.) on December 31 at 8:00 am. (d) Feeding on Porcella ponderosa fruits on January 8 at 10:00 am (1731 m a.s.l.). (e) Mating with a female bear in the canopy on December 20 at 12:00 pm (2460 m a.s.l.). (f) Observing another bear in a fruit‐bearing Cecropia tree (2468 m a.s.l.). The arrows are indicating the approximate location where the footages were recorded.