High-grading
When a Grizzly Bear catches a salmon it usually only eats part of the fish. And not the bits you might expect as they leave the bits humans most like to eat. Bears eat the skin, eggs and brain, which are the fattiest, or most calorific parts of the salmon, then leave the rest. This picky eating is known as high-grading, apparently after miners who sought only high grade ore. When salmon are abundant they can afford to be selective and only eat the high grade bits. But at times when food is scarce they would usually eat the entire fish. They have such an amazing olfactory sense that they can smell whether a salmon is male or female, and they will often discard a male salmon without even taking a mouthful. Typically they will eat ten to twenty salmon a day, but sometimes much more.
I photographed this one peeling the nutritious skin off a salmon in the Nekite River in British Columbia.
High-grading
When a Grizzly Bear catches a salmon it usually only eats part of the fish. And not the bits you might expect as they leave the bits humans most like to eat. Bears eat the skin, eggs and brain, which are the fattiest, or most calorific parts of the salmon, then leave the rest. This picky eating is known as high-grading, apparently after miners who sought only high grade ore. When salmon are abundant they can afford to be selective and only eat the high grade bits. But at times when food is scarce they would usually eat the entire fish. They have such an amazing olfactory sense that they can smell whether a salmon is male or female, and they will often discard a male salmon without even taking a mouthful. Typically they will eat ten to twenty salmon a day, but sometimes much more.
I photographed this one peeling the nutritious skin off a salmon in the Nekite River in British Columbia.