Certificate - Etheses - Saurashtra University

during early summer (Hamer and Herrero, 1987). Their study also revealed that ants
(Formicidae) were common in bear’s diet. Of the 329 scats analyzed from early May
to early September, 161 (49%) contained ants. In Greece, brown bear diet was
dominated by food items of plant origin (87%), followed by animal material (13%),
mostly composed of insects. Grasses and fleshy and dry fruits composed the major
proportion of the vegetable part in the bear diet (Mertzanis, 1994). Brown bears in
Scandinavia were found to forage in the early spring on ants (Formicidae) they
excavated from large ant mounds (Elgmork and Unander, 1998). Of the 143 ant
mounds recorded along the tracking routes, 63 (44%) were excavated by bears. Of
these, 54 (86%) were used for food and the study also revealed that brown bears used
large ant mounds for 3 purposes: for nutrition, as day beds, and for winter dens. In
Sweden, Bjorklund (1996) reported that bears resting on ant hill might be benefited
from the formic acid sprayed by the ants on the fur, which acted as a repellent against
ectoparasites. Ohdachi and Aoi (1987) collected seasonal food habits information
from 1975 to 1984 in 4 diverse areas on Hokkaido island and found that bears food
varied seasonally in each area and differed among areas largely because of differences
in food availability. Their study revealed that brown bears on Hokkaido Island were
principally vegetarians, and animal material was only 5% by weight of the annual
diet. Ants were the most abundant animal material. Food habits of European brown
bears have also been investigated by Couturier (1959), Berducou et al. (1982, 1983)
and Dendaletche (1982) in France, and by Zunino (1976) in Italy.
Food habits of brown bears have been studied in Plitvice Lakes National Park,
Yugoslavia by Cicnjak et al. (1987) by analyzing 95 scats and plant material was
found in 76% of the samples, whereas 24% contained both plant and animal material
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