Black Bear Cub Plays on a Backyard Playset: Video and Bear Facts

A small black bear cub wanders out of the trees and finds a backyard playset, then sets about climbing, pawing and swinging on it the way only a curious young bear can. Two short home videos capture these backyard visits, and they show a lot about how black bear cubs learn to move through the world.

Watch the bear cub on the playset

The first clip, distributed by RM Videos and Jukin Media, follows the cub as it investigates the play equipment beside the woods. The second video shows another backyard encounter with a young bear.

How black bear cubs grow up

The American black bear is North America’s most widespread bear, found across much of Canada and Alaska, the Rockies and the West Coast, the northeastern and Appalachian United States, and, more recently, parts of the Midwest. It is a forest animal, and many forests now meet the edge of suburbs.

Cubs are born in the den in late January or early February, while the mother is still hibernating. At birth they weigh only 280 to 450 grams and are roughly 20 cm long. A typical litter has two or three cubs, though anything from one to six is possible.

• Milk: cubs nurse for about 30 weeks.
• Growth: by six months they weigh around 18 to 27 kg.
• Independence: they stay with their mother until they are 16 to 18 months old.

So a cub playing in a yard almost always has a mother somewhere nearby, often just out of the camera’s view in the trees.

Why cubs love to climb

Black bears are highly arboreal. They climb trees to feed, to escape danger and even to den, and young bears are the most agile climbers of all; the skill fades as they grow heavy with age. For a cub, the posts, ladders and swings of a playset are just another tree to scramble up, and the play builds the strength and coordination it will need as an adult.

Black bears are omnivores, and up to 85 percent of their diet is plants: fresh shoots and grasses in spring, berries and fruit in summer, and acorns and hazelnuts in autumn. They also eat insects, honey and fish. Most bears go into their dens in October and November and sleep for three to eight months, so backyard visits peak from spring to autumn.

Keeping bears wild around your home

Bears that live near people often learn to raid garbage, bird feeders, fruit trees and beehives. Biologists have found that the more bears depend on human food, the more often encounters turn aggressive, and closing open dumps and stopping handouts has reduced conflicts. The BearWise programme sums up the habits that keep bears moving on:

• Never feed or approach bears.
• Secure food, garbage and recycling.
• Remove bird feeders when bears are active.
• Never leave pet food outdoors.
• Clean and store grills.
• Alert neighbours to bear activity.

Enjoy a cub from indoors, with the camera rolling, and give its mother plenty of room. For more bears caught on camera, see The Bear in the Water Barrel: A Backyard Photo Sequence and A Grizzly Encounter on a Jasper Mountain-Bike Ride.

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