A bear who remembered the taste of human food may have a shortened hibernation period and may accelerate aging

by Eric Kilby

The American bear who lives all over the United States will do hibernation in the nest without doing any meal or excretion for about 5 to 7 months. When the bear comes close to hibernation time, it accumulates fat by eating tree nuts etc. However, in recent years a bear that comes down to the village and emits a garbage dumping spot has become a problem . Research results have been announced that bears who remember the taste of processed foods containing a lot of sugar and corn, such as junk food and sweets, have shortened hibernation period and that aging may be accelerating.

The cascading effects of human food on hibernation and cellular aging in free-ranging black bears | Scientific Reports
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-38937-5

Bears that eat human food may hibernate less and age faster | Science News
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/bears-eat-human-food-may-hibernate-less-and-age-faster

Mr. Jonathan Pauli of the University of Wisconsin-Madison , from 2011 to 2015 winter, in order to investigate what American bear who lives in Colorado State is eating, put a GPS on a bear in the province and take its action I was checking. Then, it turned out that the bear that was originally supposed to eat animals with natural tree nuts clung the garbage dumping ground and was eating processed foods such as donuts and candies.

by Rachid H

Crops such as many corn and sugar cane to be used in the junk food and sweets, scattered into the atmosphere carbon 13 to absorb the stable isotope of carbon called, and concentrated. Therefore, if you eat processed food made of corn or sugarcane, you will ingest carbon 13 at a higher concentration than you eat wild plants. Therefore, the higher the reliance on processed foods using sugar or cornstarch, the more the carbon 13 in the body tends to increase.

Pauli focused on 30 female black bear monkeys under the supervision of the park in Colorado state and the wildlife bureau and investigated the hibernation period and cell aging status of each. As a result of examining the concentration of carbon 13 contained in the hair of the bear, the higher the concentration, the shorter the period of hibernation becomes.

In addition, a research team led by Pauli studied the relative change of bear's telomere to measure cell aging status. Telomere is the terminal part of chromosome consisting of DNA and protein with repeating sequence. Telomeres are considered to be an indication of cellular aging as telomeres become short as chromosomes repetitively replicate during somatic cell division.

When examining the bear's telomere where hibernation period is shorter than usual, it was found that it was shortening faster than other bears. It is not clear why hibernation is shortened if short hibernation is not clear, but since the metabolic function of bears during hibernation declines, it may be that the speed of aging will rise as hibernation becomes shorter , The research team guesses.

However, Rebecca Kirby, coauthor of the paper, said that although the evidence obtained in this survey was "highly suggestive", "30 bears surveyed were never cooperative in research Because it was not, we can not necessarily affirm that there is a direct relationship between "to rely on processed food containing plenty of sugar and cornstarch" and "to speed up shortening of telomere". "