Minivans are vehicle of choice for bears

October

Plenty of them roam the streets of the Lower Hudson Valley. I’m talking about minivans, which, according to a just-released study, are the “top choice of vehicle by black bears in Yosemite National Park.”

Like you’re probably thinking, my first thought upon reading about this study was that minivans typically mean kids and kids don’t ride anywhere without eating and drinking. Therefore, minivans must mean food to the bears. Food, researchers say, is the underlying cause of the bears’ interest in minivans.

“The bears seem to base this decision on “fuel efficiency”—that is, which vehicle offers the best opportunity of finding a meal. As a result, black bears have shown a strong preference for breaking into minivans over other types of vehicles.”

The study offers four hypotheses about the bears’ interest in the family-type vehicles.

1) Minivans are more likely to emit food odors, based on the fact that minivans are designed for families with children—who are more likely to spill food and drink in a vehicle. 2) Passengers of minivans are more prone to leave large amounts of food in a vehicle parked overnight. 3) Minivans may be structurally easier to break into than other types of vehicles. Bears most often gained access to minivans by popping open a rear side window. 4) A few individual bears could be responsible for all the break-ins, and they are displaying a learned behavior for choosing minivans.

The TJN photo shows a black bear reclining in a tree in Rockland County in 2006.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 14th, 2009 at 12:20 pm by Mike Risinit.
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