Your minivan is one big pic-a-nic basket, say Yosemite's black bears

This just in: Bears (at least, Yosemite National Park's black bears) view your minivan as one big, delicious pic-a-nic basket.

A new report in the Journal of Mammalogy has the details of data collected on bear-related vehicle break-ins -- more than 900 of them -- between 2001 and 2007 at Yosemite. Researchers broke the incidents down by vehicle type, comparing the break-in data with available statistics on the types of vehicles that entered the park.

What they found might not be too surprising: Minivans, often filled with jam-handed kids, accounted for 26% of the vehicles broken into by bears. (Next on the list: SUVs, which accounted for 22.5% of the break-ins.  17.1% of the vehicles were small cars, 13.7% were sedans and 11.9% were trucks, The Times' Daily Travel & Deal Blog reports. About 9% of the bear break-ins were distributed among other vehicle types.) 

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