Officials from the Nevada Department of Wildlife were forced to put down a young bear at Lake Tahoe for causing trouble in the area. This marks the third instance where an offspring of a notorious black bear at the lake had to be euthanized for bad behavior.

According to reports, the mother of the troublesome cub is a 19-year-old bear known in Lake Tahoe for its long history of bad behavior, a character trait which experts believe could have potentially have been passed on to its offspring.

The young of this female black bear could find it difficult to break from this generation cycle as long as people continue to leave garbage and other wastes within the reach of the animals.

Wildlife biologist Carl Lackey of the Nevada wildlife department described the parent bear as a chronic and nuisance kind of animal.

He said that the female bear, designated as Green 108, had a habit of getting into trash in the same area, and that they have captured the animal and several of its litters on many occasions.

Nature vs Nurture

Wildlife experts have long debated the concept of nature versus nurture among black bears wherein they question whether some bears are just predisposed to behave badly or if they learn this from older bears.

In 2008, Lackey co-authored a study regarding the impact of genetics in the conflict behavior of bears. The research is featured in the Journal of Mammalogy.

Lackey said that he and his colleagues came to the conclusion that genetics alone could not be used to help explain the nuisance behavior often seen in black bears.

In 1989, researchers from the National Park Service found that problems observed among grizzly bears at the Yellowstone National Park were a result of behavior that was passed on from the mother bear to its offspring. While this trait was also passed on to successive generations of the grizzly bears, the researchers were not able to determine whether it was inherited or learned.

Researchers Victoria Seher and Rachel Mazur from Yosemite conducted a study in 2008 in which they found bears that actively tutored cubs to search for food in environments populated by humans. Seher and Mazur concluded that foraging conditioned through food is a skill among bears that is passed on from older animals to the young.

The researchers note that some of the bears they observed pushed their cubs into vehicles and buildings in order to retrieve food.

Lackey said that some of the bears that have been captured at Lake Tahoe several times but were later released into the wild no longer approached traps anymore.

He said that the bears would send their young into the trap or into homes to retrieve food.

Green 108 was first captured at Lake Tahoe in 2004, after which wildlife experts tagged the bear and released back into the wild. Since then, the bear has been caught four more times with the most recent being in July 2012.

Lackey pointed out that they do not euthanize wild bears for simply getting in trash. This conflict behavior, however, often escalates from tipping trash cans over to breaking into people's homes. He said that this is when they are forced to euthanize the animals.

Photo: Neal Herbert | Flickr