Fecal glucocorticoid metabolites stabilize following the transition of free-ranging orphaned wild polar bear cubs into human care
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Relocating free-ranging animals to human-care facilities can enhance survival when individuals are unlikely to survive in the wild. Between 2015 and 2017, six orphaned polar bear ( Ursus maritimus Phipps, 1774) cubs from northern Manitoba were transferred to the Assiniboine Park Zoo in Winnipeg, Manitoba. To assess their physiological response to relocation, fecal glucocorticoid metabolites were measured to determine the timing and extent of their adjustment to human care. Daily fecal samples ( n = 822) were collected from six cubs-of-the-year over a period of 180 days post-arrival. Biochemical and biological validation indicated that a cortisol antibody-based enzyme immunoassay was a robust technique for quantifying changes in fecal glucocorticoid metabolites in polar bear. Linear-mixed models accounting for days since arrival, body condition, and individual identity showed that fecal cortisol metabolites decreased to a mean of 28.5 ng/g approximately 12 days after transfer. These results indicate that with proper care and nutrition, orphaned polar bear cubs can rapidly adjust to living under human care within 2 weeks of relocation. Although there are several challenges to using fecal hormone metabolites to measure stress physiology in wildlife, they can still offer insights into how animals adapt to novel environments. As human–wildlife conflicts are expected to increase, establishing validated monitoring techniques for physiological acclimation will support the welfare and management of free-ranging animals transferred into human care.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".