Activity Introductions Today this classroom is part of the Northwestern Coniferous forest You will be a population of black bears Recall, what type of consumer is a bear? How do they feed?

Food Gathering Rules Gather as many different kinds of food as possible Only take 1 piece of food at a time to your “den” Bears can interact with others in the population, but bears are not aggressive toward one another

“Special” bears in the population Injured bear = hunts by hopping on 1 leg Blind bear = hunts with 1 eye blindfolded Mother bear = must gather twice as much food and care for her 2 cubs at the same time

Count up your food Sort cards by color Numbers represent how many pounds Ex: P-20 means 20 pounds of plants

# of pounds Nuts Berries Insects Meat Plants Total:

# of pounds Percentage of food Nuts2025% Berries2025% Insects1215% Meat810% Plants2025% Total:80100%

Total amount of food for entire class –_______ lbs If bears need 80 lbs of food to survive, how many in this class would survive? –__________ bears would survive in this class How many actually survived? –Survived_______Didn’t survive______ Why are these numbers different?

Did the “special” bears survive? Did the injured bear survive? Did the blinded bear survive? Did the mother survive? Did her cubs survive? Should she feed herself or the cubs first?

Analysis Questions What is “carrying capacity”? What was the carrying capacity for this forest? What are some of the limiting factors that affected your population? What other factors limit populations? How does human activity contribute to limiting factors?