World’s oldest wild bear dies at 39

MINNEAPOLIS – The world’s oldest-known wild bear has died of old age in northern Minnesota, quietly coming to her final resting place in a shady spot that a bear would find as a good place for a daytime nap, a leading state researcher said Tuesday.

The decomposed corpse of the female American black bear, known to Minnesota Department of Natural Resources researchers as Bear No. 56, was found by state researcher Karen Noyce in the Chippewa National forest near Marcell. The bear was 39 1/2 years old.

The average age of a bear killed by a Minnesota hunter is less than 4 years old, and about 80 percent of No. 56’s many cubs died by age 6. Of the hundreds of bears that have been radio-collared and studied by the DNR over the past 32 years, the longest any survived was 23 years. Some bears in zoos have made it into their 40s, Noyce said.

The bear was first captured and radio-collared in July 1981 by DNR scientists during the first summer of a long-term research project on bear population ecology. She was 7 years old at the time and accompanied by three female cubs.

During the next 32 years, she and her many offspring provided an almost uninterrupted record of reproduction, survival, movements and, eventually, aging. The DNR says the information from this bear and her offspring have “contributed significantly to the scientific literature on black bear biology.”

In the last few years of her life, Bear No. 56 began to visit some hunters’ baits, but they abided by a DNR request not to shoot collared bears.

“We’re very fond of that bear,” Noyce said. “But it’s not like a pet or anything, when you have a relationship.”

She had made a plea this spring asking area residents to watch out for the bear on roadways, saying it would be a rare and remarkable opportunity for a researcher to follow a bear through to a natural death from old age.

Noyce said that when she would visit Bear No. 56 in recent years, “I would sit there for a while, sit there and absorb sitting next to a very, very old bear.”

She was having trouble getting around, but eating normally. She couldn’t see and couldn’t hear. She was stumbling around.

“We’re glad to see she died a natural death. It was a good way to go.”

Noyce estimates that the bear died sometime in July, weeks before she used a DNR pilot’s coordinates from the radio transmission to locate the animal. She said this is the first bear in the DNR’s study to die of old age.

“She had left her home range looking for food, apparently,” Noyce said. “I was surprised in her state that she would do that. She was just lying in a wooded spot. It was a kind of place a bear would lay down and take a midday nap.”

From 1981-95, Bear No. 56 produced eight litters of cubs and successfully reared 21 of the 22 cubs to 18 months of age.

Bear No. 56 outlived by 19 years all of the 360 other radio-collared black bears that DNR researchers have followed since 1981. She also outlived any radio-collared bear of any species in the world. Only a few individual study bears have been reported to reach age 30. The second oldest was a brown bear in Alaska that lived to 34.

“We know most of the people in the world who have radio-tracked bears for a long time,” Noyce said, explaining how her profession settled on No. 56 as the world’s oldest.

Researchers suspect Bear No. 56’s longevity probably is best attributed to a combination of factors, including a home range with few people or major roads, her predisposition to avoiding people and just good fortune in general.

When last handled in March 2010, Bear No. 56 was a healthy weight but her teeth showed excessive wear and her eyes were clouding. Since then, her hearing and eyesight continued to deteriorate.