Are Bears Becoming Addicted to Sugar and Fast Food?

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There’s a large bear holed up in the crawl space of a Sierra Madre, California home, and it doesn’t seem to want to leave. The homeowners say the black bear, which they’ve named “Junior”, camps out beneath their home all day, then leaves at night to forage around the neighborhood for food. They once found a ketchup packet in the bear’s scat. Is this type of thing happening more frequently? It certainly seems so.

One wildlife biologist believes more bears are breaking into and/or hanging around people’s homes because they’re becoming addicted to foods with high sugar content. In an interview with KCAL News, Forrest Galante said: “Certain bears are becoming addicted to human substances. Some of those substances are sugars [and] some of them are actually alcohol.”

Galante adds that bears have an incredible sense of smell, so they can smell sugar way more than humans or even dogs can.

Yesterday, Bob Nesler, one of the homeowners, posted a photo of Junior looking right at home in his crawl space. Nesler’s wife Susan mentioned in an interview with KCAL News that one wildlife biologist noticed Junior’s teeth are “going bad,” which Susan Nesler likens to the bear’s poor diet.

So, are some bears becoming addicted to sugar? Watch the local news report, including the interview with Galante, here:

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