January / February Is Birthday Time For Bears
The fact that bears mate in summer and give birth seven or eight months later might make you think that bear pregnancies aren’t all that different from human ones. But even though bears mate in summer, they’re not officially pregnant until late fall. Nevertheless, they give birth a few short months later, in January or February.
Mother Nature has engineered a unique two-step pregnancy process for bears. During step one (mating), eggs are fertilized, but don’t implant or begin to further develop. Several months later, development (step two) begins when the fertilized eggs finally implant, typically when the bear is safely tucked into her den.
