{"id":10664,"date":"2014-05-26T10:24:15","date_gmt":"2014-05-26T17:24:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=10664"},"modified":"2014-05-26T10:34:05","modified_gmt":"2014-05-26T17:34:05","slug":"polymorphistic-bears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=10664","title":{"rendered":"Polymorphistic bears"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Yesterday morning, I saw an example of polymorphism high in the south Selkirk Mountains. It took\u00a0the form of different colour morphs within a family of Black Bears.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Colour morphs (also called phases or forms) are found in a number of species. Among Black Bears the colours can range through\u00a0black, chocolate, cinnamon, cream and white. Furthermore, these various colours can be found within a single family.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>One\u00a0colour morph in British Columbia, the white to creamy Black Bear, is so famous that it has been given the designation, spirit bear. Although found throughout the Province, the\u00a0proportion of these light morphs varies geographically and is highest along\u00a0the north coast where it reaches about 10% among the kermode subspecies.<\/p>\n<p>The takeaway message is that while the spirit bear is a visually interesting colour morph of the Black Bear, it is not a subspecies (as many sources\u00a0claim); rather it is a colour morph found in various subspecies. It is also not a synonym for kermode; it is found everywhere, including\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/kootenay-lake.ca\/mammals\/carnivores\/bbears\/index.html\">here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Did I see a spirit bear on\u00a0Sunday morning? Possibly, but its colour seems somewhere between cinnamon\u00a0and cream.<\/p>\n<p>The first thing spotted was a large chocolate sow. She appeared to be foraging on the bulbs of glacier lilies. What may be her den is in the rocks just above.<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-10667\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/blackbear140525as.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Slightly to the east and higher on the mountainside, was a light colour morph cub also enjoying glacier lilies. At first, I thought the dark region in the lower left was the shadow of a rock; no, it is a black colour morph\u00a0cub.<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-10666\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/blackbear140525bs.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>And below these two was a third colour morph cub. The chocolate sow has three cubs each with\u00a0a different colour morph: cream, black, and chocolate.<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-10665\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/blackbear140525cs.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"720\" \/>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; Yesterday morning, I saw an example of polymorphism high in the south Selkirk Mountains. It took\u00a0the form of different colour morphs within a family of Black Bears.\u00a0 Colour morphs (also called phases or forms) are found in a number &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=10664\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mammals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10664"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10664\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10673,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10664\/revisions\/10673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}