Pennsylvania's bear hunting season began on Saturday, the state issued around 175,000 licenses for rifle and bow hunters this year. The state is home to about 20,000 black bears and officials are expecting a 2-3% kill rate for hunters. PA hunters recorded 666 black bear kills on opening day - down from 1,142 last year.
While black bears can be a common sight in the rural and mountainous regions of PA, more and more residents are reporting bears in and around developed communities. A bear's sense...
Pennsylvania's bear hunting season began on Saturday, the state issued around 175,000 licenses for rifle and bow hunters this year. The state is home to about 20,000 black bears and officials are expecting a 2-3% kill rate for hunters. PA hunters recorded 666 black bear kills on opening day - down from 1,142 last year.
While black bears can be a common sight in the rural and mountainous regions of PA, more and more residents are reporting bears in and around developed communities. A bear's sense of smell is seven times more sensitive than a bloodhound's; they will sniff out and pursue any and all food sources.
Black bear mating season runs through the summer and male bears will more than 20 miles a day to find a female, and those female pheromones can travel for miles, often across human development. This, coupled with a bear's insatiable appetite for food, will drive bears into backyards and commercial dumpsters.
On Tuesday's Smart Talk, we discuss human interaction with black bears, the dangers they may pose to people and the threat of human encroachment on the state's bear population with Pennsylvania Game Commission wildlife biologist Mark Ternent.
Also, a team of astronomers at Penn State discovered a planet 2000 light years away with some unique weather patterns; it snows sunscreen on planet Kepler-13Ab. The planet orbits a binary star system, Kepler-13A, and is in a tidally locked orbit - like our own moon, the same side of the planet always faces its host star.
On the dark side of planet Kepler-13Ab, it snows titanium oxide, the main ingredient in sunscreen. The Penn State team's discovery added Kepler-13Ab to a list of planets throughout our solar system and universe whose conditions allow for some truly weird stuff to fall from their skies.
We'll discuss this discovery and some of the more bizarre forms of precipitation throughout the universe, including molten iron, glass and even diamonds with team member Thomas Beatty, an assistant research professor with Penn State's Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics.
