For Yosemite bears, dinner arrives in a minivan

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. (AP) — What's bigger than a picnic basket and even better than one in the eyes of black bears that call Yosemite National Park home?

Minivans driven by families with children who leave behind a trail of spilled juice boxes, Cheerios and coolers carrying other snacks, according to a study published in October in the Journal of Mammalogy.

Park scientists set out to study whether the bears had developed a taste for certain vehicle models after noticing that more minivans seemed to get broken into than other types of cars.

Their research proved them right: minivans represented 29 percent of the 908 vehicles torn into by bears between 2001 and 2007, even though they made up just 7 percent of the cars that visited Yosemite.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.