Kelcie North

Connor
Biology 1615
Final draft

How different drugs affect Grizzly Bears

I chose to write my paper on the Immobilization of Grizzly Bears (Ursus
Arctos) with Dexmedetomidine, Tiletamine, and Zolazpam. I chose to write
about this article because it sounded interesting to me, and I was curious
how these drugs would affect the bears.
This article starts off by talking about how the different drugs affect
bears by themselves, and how much more affective the drugs are when used
together. When the researchers used these drugs together, it resulted in a
decreased dosage for anesthesia. The objectives the researchers were trying
to achieve were determine the success, understand the interactions between
different aspects, measure the recovery from the doses, and make
recommendations for the use of the drug combinations.
In this research article, they used 10 captive Grizzly Bears, (three
adult males, three adult/subadult females, and four male cubs) from the
Washington State University Bear Center, and 21 wild Grizzly Bears,
(eighteen adult females, and three subadult males) from the Kenai Peninsula,
Alaska, Denali National Park, Alaska, and Rocky Mountain Front, Montana,
from September 2010 to May 2012. With the captive bears, the drugs were
given intramuscularly by blow darting or a jab stick with a 3.8 centimeter, 18

gauge, needle from distances between one and three meters, while aiming
for either the front leg or the beck leg, to guarantee drug absorption. With
the wild bears, 20 out of the 21 bears were immobilized from a helicopter.
Because of the distance from the helicopter, the researchers were unable to
retry to immobilize the bears. All the darted bears were monitored closely,
either by foot at an appropriate distance or by helicopter. Once the bear was
down, the researchers immediately started monitoring the behavior, the
depth of the anesthesia, and vital signs. To make sure the researchers had
the right dosage, the bears were weighed. The researchers timed from the
time the bear went down, to the time that they were standing back up on all
four feet. To judge the behavioral responses with Dexmedetomidine, the
researchers monitored the heart rates, hemoglobin saturation percentages,
breath rates, and temperature of the bears. The heart rate of the bears was
used to see the overall metabolic activity and to see how fast the drugs were
going to be absorbed and digested.
No additional anesthetic was used besides what was in the original
injections for full anesthesia of 82% of the captive bears. The average dose
of drugs for captive bears during their active season was 2.46 milligrams of
Tiletamine and 6.04 milligrams of Dexmedetomidine per kilogram. The
average time for the first sign of the drugs working was 3.7 minutes,
workable anesthesia was achieved after 8.1 minutes. During hibernation, the
average dosage for adults was 1.40 milligrams of Tiletamine and 3.62
milligrams of Dexmedetomidine per kilogram. The average time for the first

signs of it working was 9.1 minutes and the average time for workable
anesthesia was achieved at 15.5 minutes. 57% of the wild bears were
immobilized. The first signs of anesthesia was seen with 2.5 minutes and
workable anesthesia was achieved around 5.5 minutes. Workable anesthesia
lasted for about 86 minutes in captive, active season bears, and about 60
minutes in hibernating bears. In the wild bears, the anesthesia lasted for
about 88 minutes. The average time for recovery was 28.4 minutes in
captive bears and 39.4 minutes in wild bears.
By using all three drugs together, it reduced the dose by about
50% and shortened the time of recovering from the anesthesia. Researchers
estimated 30-50% of darts fired, did not inject the drugs.
The researchers did the research they did to find out if combining
certain drugs will affect Grizzly Bears and how it could help with immobilizing
the bears. The researchers did not exactly use the scientific method, but
they used their own method of how the research needed to be done. They
did not really predict what would happen, they just went out and did what
they needed to do. The experiment the researchers did was to see how
combining these three drugs would affect the anesthesia of captive and wild
Grizzly Bears. The techniques they used where to keep themselves safe with
doing the procedures that they did. The results were that combining these
three drugs made the anesthesia faster with a fast recovery. The results
mean that you can use these three drugs to immobilize Grizzly Bears faster
with no major side effects to the bears.