Tennessee wildlife photographer snaps uncommon shot: a black bear with five cubs

An East Tennessee-based wildlife photographer captured images of something you don't see every day: a mama black bear with five — count 'em — five cubs.

Barry Spruce, who owns Cades Cove Gallery in Townsend, said he snapped the photos on a friend's private property in North Carolina. Spruce said his friend called him after spotting the family of six, and he observed the bears for half an hour last week.

One of the photos shows the cubs horsing around and climbing a tree. Another shows them with their noses in the grass, not far away from their mother. Cellphone videos taken by Spruce show the cubs higher up in the tree, hanging out on different limbs and nuzzling each other adorably.

Black bears typically have litters of two or three cubs. Litters of four are less common, and some consider litters of five to be rare.

Matt Cameron, spokesperson for the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, said he's seen bears with four cubs but never five. Bill Stiver, the supervisory wildlife biologist for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, said he's only heard of a five-cub litter three times in his 30-year career.

"I've never heard of it within the park," Stiver said. "It's usually outside the park, and it's usually associated with bears feeding on human food and garbage."

Justin McVey, a biologist with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, said he sees litters of five more often. He manages bears in mountainous western North Carolina and said he's seen mothers with five cubs 10-12 times over the past decade.

"I wouldn't say it's normal, but I wouldn't say it's rare," McVey said. "Bears are really interesting, so when they get pregnant during the summertime, their embryos kind of go into a suspended animation state, and depending on whether or not that mom gets well fed during the fall, she can either reabsorb those embryos and not have any cubs that winter, or she can continue on with that development."

Studies have found that the size of black bear litters is dependent, at least in part, on the availability of fall foods. McVey said he sees larger litters in Asheville, which he described as a city that sprung up in the middle of bear country. There, bears often feed on garbage, bird feeders and other stuff left lying out year-round by humans.

"It's kind of rewriting the biology books," he said.

Stiver said unnatural litter sizes are generally not a good thing. Bears who begin to see humans as a convenient source of food can lose their natural fear of people and become dangerous. A fed bear, the saying goes, is a dead bear. Stiver plugged the organization BearWise, which aims to teach people to live responsibly with bears.

Still, Spruce's videos and images are undeniably cute. Bears give birth in January or February, so the cubs pictured are about six months old. It's a good time to photograph them, Spruce said, because they spend a lot of time shimmying up and down trees.

"They start coming out of the dens early to mid-April, and then they're hanging out with mom and they're learning all the life skills they need to survive," McVey said. "They can climb a tree immediately when they come out, but they're learning how to climb trees, learning how to forage for food, learning how to interact with their siblings.

"They're just learning bear behavior — how to be a bear."