Facts About Bears
(https://www.kidzone.ws/lw/bears/facts.htm)

The Asiatic bear species lives in eastern Asia.  They can be found in alpine and tropical forested hills and mountain regions of Afghanistan, Malaysia, Cambodia, China, India, Iran, Russia and Taiwan.  They are thought to be the closest bear relative of the American black bear.  They are also known as the Himalayan black bear, the Tibetan black bear or the moon bear.
 

These bears are black with a whitish or creamy colored ‘Y’ on their chest.  They have large ears and their hair is extra long and fluffy around their neck and shoulders.  In the bear world they would be considered medium sized. 

This bear is a little more fierce than other species and will attack humans if threatened or surprised.  They tend to spend a lot of time in trees in order to avoid their main predator...  People.  Asiatic bears make “nests” in trees for sleeping in the summer months and use twigs to make comfortable beds in the snow in winter.

Asiatic bears are, like all other bears, omnivores.  Their diet consists of plants, berries, insects, and carrion.  They are not fussy about their food. Because their habitat is shrinking due to human population and farmland spreading into their habitats, they have been known to wander onto farms to hunt domestic animals like sheep or goats. Naturally, farmers do not like this and will shoot any bear they see on their land. 

The name black bear is not a very accurate name for this species of bear.  They can come in many colors such as black, brown, gray, silvery-blue, and cream.  Most black bears are, in fact, black but often a black colored bear will have brown cubs and brown colored bears may have black cubs.  The black bear’s habitats range from the far northern tundra of Canada and Alaska to the forests of Central America and Mexico.

Black bears have small eyes, long noses, round ears and a short tail.  They are considered to be large to medium sized (males weighing between 56.7-226 kg or 130-500 lbs.), males being larger than females, and the different sub-species are similar in their body shape, footprints and diets.  There are small differences in appearance that make each sub-species special, such as a furrier face, thicker fur, sleeker fur, and their size.  The Kodiak bear is said to be the largest sub-species of black bear.  This is because they live along the Pacific coast and eat a lot of salmon.  The Newfoundland bear gets quite large as well, since they eat more meat than other bears.

The typical diet of a black bear is similar to other species of bear.  They like nutrition and protein rich foods like termites, bees and moths.  They eat berries, nuts, acorns, honey and fruit. Because bears are not active predators they prefer to eat carrion. Carrion is especially important for bears that have just come out of hibernation and are in great need of protein.

Black bears have been given the reputation of attacking people.  This is not true. Black bears, like most other bears, will rarely attack humans.  They will try to scare off danger by standing on their back feet, baring their teeth, and growling.  They may attack if their cubs are in danger but only as a last resort and sometimes not even then.

Mating happens in spring but the females have an ability called ‘delayed implantation’, which allows the egg to be fertilized later.  This is so that the cub, or cubs, will be born during hibernation.

The 16 sub-species are: 

• Kermode or Spirit bear (Western Canada)
• Vancouver black bear
• Queen Charlotte black bear
• Newfoundland black bear
• Glacier bear or blue bear (Alaska & British Columbia)
• Kenai black bear (Alaska)
• Dall black bear (Alaska)
• Cinnamon bear (central U.S.  And Canada)
• Olympic black bear (western coast of Canada & U.S.)
• Florida black bear
• New Mexico black bear
• East Mexico black bear
• West Mexico black bear
• Louisiana black bear
• Minnesota black bear
• Eastern black bear

Interestingly, 8 of the 16 sub-species of black bears can be found in British Columbia, Canada.

The Spirit, or Kermode, bear is a sub-species of the Black Bear.  It is a really interesting bear and so it gets special mention!

The Kermode bear is found only in British Columbia, Canada, and is black, most of the time.  About 1 out of every 10 Kermode bears is pure white.  They are not Polar bears, nor are they sub-species of the Polar bear.  These rare white bears are called Spirit Bears.  In every other way they are like all the other black bears except that they carry a special gene that causes their hair to be white rather than black. 

The name “Spirit Bear” may have come from the First Nations people, which would mean that this bear had special, spiritual meaning to them.   First Nations legend says that the Spirit Bear was made pure white, by the creator, to remind people of the Ice Age, when the earth was covered in snow and ice, and the problems of that time.
 

While the black bear is found only throughout North & Central America, the brown bear family is spread all over the world.  They live in dense forests in mountains,  valleys and meadows and can be found in Canada, in central regions of the U.S.  And throughout Europe and Asia.

Brown bears can be recognized by their most distinctive feature, their shoulder hump.  Super strong shoulder muscles help this bear to dig up roots and tear apart logs to find food.  These muscles are located in the ‘hump’ of the brown bear.  Brown bears can move rocks and logs and dig through hard soil and rocky ground using their long sharp claws when making their dens.

The brown bear’s diet is quite similar to all other bears.  They eat grass, fruit, insects, roots and bulbs of plants along with carrion and, when hungry enough, they will hunt small animals.  Brown bears that live near the coast feed on fish, particularly salmon.  These bears will grow much larger than others because of their protein rich diet.
 

The entrance of a Brown Bear's den is a tunnel that goes down to a small ‘bedroom’.  The female bear will hibernate all winter long, not even waking up to give birth!  The baby cubs will find their way to their mother’s chest and nurse and sleep until the mother bear wakes up.  By the time she does wake up her teeny little cubs are much larger and quite playful!  The den will probably be used only once.  

A Brown Bear cub’s life is dangerous.  There are many animals that don’t mind eating bear cubs and male adult bears are one of them! 

The Brown Bear, like it’s relative, the Black Bear, has many sub-species: 

• Alaskan brown bear
• Asiatic brown bear
• European brown bear
• Grizzly bear (North America)
• Himalayan snow bear 
• Kodiak bear (Alaska)
• Hokkaido brown bear (Japan)
• Siberian bear (Russia)
• Red bear (India and the Himalayas)

The giant panda is a very unique looking bear that everyone recognizes.  Who can resist that cute, cuddly looking animal with its big black eyes?  But remember, the Giant Panda is still a bear, which means that they can be dangerous or aggressive when they need to be.  Pandas are very fast on foot and kind of lumber, or trot, along.  They are really good climbers and can swim to escape danger.  Pandas are very shy and because of their markings they are difficult to see in the forest.

There is only one sub-species of panda, and it is found only in China.  The black and white bear is considered endangered.  There are only about 1000 giant pandas left in the wild.  Its habitat is continually shrinking because of the growing Chinese population spreading into the forested areas and cutting down trees (especially bamboo trees) for more farmland.  With it’s habitat getting smaller and farms cropping up all over it has a very difficult time migrating, or traveling, to another area of bamboo forest.  The giant panda is also hunted for it’s beautiful fur.

Pandas main food source is bamboo.  This stumps scientists since bamboo is not high in nutrients and is not easily digested by the bear.  That means that the panda has to eat an awful lot of it to get the nutrition it needs to live.  Pandas will eat 50 – 60 pounds of bamboo a day, so obviously they spend most of their day eating!  They will eat meat, berries, flowers, grass and nuts if necessary.  The pandas front paws have adapted to its love of bamboo, too.  Along with its five 'fingers', the panda has grown a ‘thumb’.  Part of the wrist bone has developed into a thumb that faces opposite to the rest of the fingers.  This allows the panda to hold onto bamboo more tightly.

Female pandas will give birth to 1 or 2 babies but will only look after one of them.  She will be a very attentive mother to that one cub but the other will die.  After about a year the young panda will be ready to live on its own

The polar bear or the sea/ice bear are the world's largest land predators.  They can be found in the Artic, the U.S. (Alaska), Canada, Russia, Denmark (Greenland), and Norway. Each of these countries either banned hunting or established rules for how many polar bears could be hunted within its own boundaries.  These rules help keep polar bear populations stable.  Today, 25,000 to 40,000 polar bears roam the Arctic.

Around the age of four or five the female polar bear can start having babies.  They usually only have two cubs and they have these babies in a cave they've dug in a large snow drift.  They stay there over winter and come out in spring with the babies.

The babies are much smaller than human babies when they're born.  They are the size of a rat and weigh little more than a pound.  They can grow to full man size in a year if they have lots of food.

Male polar bears may grow 10 feet tall and weigh over 1400 pounds.  Females reach seven feet and weigh 650 pounds. In the wild polar bears live up to age 25.

Despite what we think, a polar bear's fur is not white. Each hair is clear hollow tube. Polar bears look white because each hollow hair reflects the light.  On sunny days, it traps the sun's infrared heat and keeps the bear warm at 98 degrees F (when they're resting).

Polar bear fur is oily and water repellent.  The hairs don't mat when wet, allowing the polar bears to easily shake free of water and any ice that may form after swimming.

Polar bears have wide front paws with slightly webbed toes that help them swim.  They paddle with their front feet and steer with their hind feet. Paw pads with rough surfaces help prevent polar bears from slipping up on the ice.

Polar bears have been known to swim 100 miles (161 kilometers) at a stretch.

Polar bears primarily eat seals.  They often rest silently at a seal’s breathing hole in the ice, waiting for a seal in the water to surface.  Once the seal comes up, the bear will spring and sink its jagged teeth into the seal’s head.

Sometimes the polar bear stalks its prey.  It may see a seal lying near its breathing hole and slowly move toward it, then charge it, biting its head or grabbing it with its massive claws.  A polar bear may also hunt by swimming beneath the ice.


Humans are the polar bears only predator. Baby polar bears often starve. In fact, 70 percent do not live to their third birthday.  Sometimes seals are hard to find, especially in the summer when the ice has melted.  All across the Arctic, man is moving in to mine oil and coal and there is less space for the polar bear to live. Oil spills can be very dangerous.  A bear with oil on its coat cannot regulate its body temperature properly. If the bear eats the oil while grooming it could die.

Man made pollution is also a cause of death.  At each stage of the food chain, pollutants get more concentrated. By the end when the polar bear eats the seal and it could be lethal.

Don’t you think that this is a strange name for a bear since it isn’t a sloth?  At one time, scientists thought that this creature was a sloth!  They have many similar characteristics such as hanging from branches, carrying their babies on their backs, living near other sloth bears, and having the fathers around to help raise the cubs.  Only after studying the sloth bear closer, did scientists decide to change the classification to bear family.  Sloth often refers to being slow, but these bears are not slow.

The sloth bear has adapted to its environment in a neat way.  These bears have developed hairless, flexible lips with gaps in their teeth, long tongues and closing nostrils.  Why?  Well, since their main source of food is termites, they have to be able to suck the bugs out of their homes.  The sloth bear claws into the hard termite mound with its sharp, long claws.  It then sticks its snout into the hole, closes its nostrils and ‘vacuums’ the termites into its mouth.  Its long tongue scoops up the termites that get away!  People have heard their sucking and slurping from over 90 meters (around 300 ft) away!  Sloth bears also eat eggs, insects, honeycombs and carrion.  They can climb high into trees for fruit.

Female sloth bears will have one or two babies and will raise them for the first 2-3 years of their lives.  The male will stick around with his family and help take care of the cubs.  

The sloth bear has a shaggy coat that is usually black with a ‘Y’ shaped white color down its chest.  They live in the evergreen forests and grasslands of India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Burma and Nepal.  They are popular in those countries but not for good reasons.  These are the bears that are captured and trained (often tortured) to entertain people as the famous dancing bears.  They are also hunted for their body parts to be  used in traditional medicines.   And, sadly, because their habitat is shrinking due to growing human population, they go looking for food on farmland and are killed by farmers protecting their crops and animals.

The spectacled Bear is also known as the Andean bear because they live in the Andes Mountains.  If you’ve ever seen a picture of this bear you will know how it got its name!  The face markings of the spectacled bear make it look like it is wearing glasses or spectacles.  

This is the only bear species that can be found only in South America in the forests of the Andes Mountains.  They are thought to be the last living bear from the otherwise extinct short-faced bear family.

Spectacled bears eat a wide variety of foods including rodents, birds, berries, grasses and fruit but their favourite is the Bromeliacae plant.  These bears are excellent climbers with short but strong legs.  They build nests high in trees for sleeping and eating in.

The sun bear is one of the smallest bears, at around 1.4 meters (4.5 ft long) and weighing up to 100 lbs.  They have short, sleek black fur with an orange-yellow horseshoe shape of color on their chest.  In some folktales it is said that this shape represents the rising sun.  They are also known as honey bears and Malayan sun bears.  

A sun bear's diet consists of lizards, little birds, rodents, insects, termites, fruit and honey.  The long sharp claws of the sun bear are handy for tearing open trees where insect and bee nests can be found and slurped up using their extra long tongue. 

Because they live in tropical temperatures, sun bears do not need to hibernate and are able to mate at any time of year.  Unlike North American bears, male and female sun bears may hang out or live together while raising the cubs.  Sun bears will usually have two cubs at a time and care for them for two years until they are old enough to survive on their own.

Sun bears have loose skin that allows them to twist when being bitten, so as to bite an attacker.  They also have very strong legs that are great for climbing.  These characteristics help this bear protect itself from tigers and other possible predators.

The sun bear can be found in the tropical rainforests of southeastern Asia .  They are hunted for their meat and their body parts which are used for medicine.  Cubs are often taken from their mothers and kept as pets.