50 Fun Facts About Black Bears

A black bear cub that a Canadian army vet left at London Zoo during World War I inspired which storybook character?

Winnie-the-Pooh took his name from Winnie, a cub the vet had bought from a hunter at a train stop in Ontario. Christopher Robin Milne visited her so often that he renamed his own toy after her.

The living Smokey Bear, a rescued black bear cub, got so much mail that the Postal Service gave him what?

A ZIP Code of his own, 20252, was assigned in 1964 because more than 13,000 letters a week were arriving for the bear. The code is still in use.

The fur of the Canadian black bear is used to make the tall ceremonial caps worn by which British soldiers?

The Foot Guards wear bearskin caps that stand 11 inches tall at the front and weigh about a pound and a half. The Grenadier Guards adopted the style after the Battle of Waterloo.

The black bear that inspired the film Cocaine Bear died after eating smugglers' drugs in which southern state?

Georgia investigators found the 175-pound female in 1985 after she ate cocaine dropped from a smuggler's plane. A stuffed bear said to be her is displayed at a mall in Lexington, Kentucky.

Safety experts advise doing what if a black bear attacks, the opposite of the usual advice for a grizzly?

Fight back with kicks and blows aimed at the bear's face and muzzle. Black bear attacks tend to be driven by hunger rather than defense, so playing dead does not help.

Which sense is a black bear's keenest, rated about seven times more sensitive than a domestic dog's?

Smell is the sense a black bear relies on most, though its eyesight is good too. In tests, bears learned to tell shapes and colors apart as quickly as dogs do.

Up to 85 percent of a black bear's diet is made up of what, despite the animal's fearsome reputation?

Vegetation makes up as much as 85 percent of the diet: spring shoots and grasses, summer berries, then autumn nuts. Most of the animal matter a black bear eats is insects.

The teddy bear got its name after President Theodore Roosevelt refused to shoot a black bear on a hunt in which state?

Mississippi's governor had invited Roosevelt on the 1902 hunt, where a guide tied a bear to a tree for him. He called shooting it unsportsmanlike, and a newspaper cartoon made the moment famous.

What name is given to the rare white-coated black bears of coastal British Columbia, the province's official mammal?

Spirit bear is the name for these animals, which are not albinos: their skin and eyes are still pigmented. Only a few hundred of them exist.

Black bear cubs are usually born in which months, while their mother is still inside her winter den?

January and February births mean the cubs arrive weighing under a pound, covered in fine gray down. They nurse in the den until the snow melts.

Black bears use their short, curved claws for which skill, relied on to feed, escape enemies and even hibernate?

Climbing trees comes so naturally that black bears rank among the most arboreal of all bear species, although the skill declines as they age.

Black bears will gnaw through a trunk to reach which favorite food when their paws cannot get to it?

Honey is worth the pain: once a hive is breached, a black bear scrapes the combs together with its paws and eats them regardless of the bee stings.

Only about 70 percent of black bears are black; which spice names the species' reddish color phase?

Cinnamon bears are common in the Rocky Mountains, where only about half of all black bears are black and the lighter ones are often mistaken for grizzlies.

Which feature of a grizzly, absent on even the largest black bear, helps hikers tell the two species apart?

A shoulder hump of muscle marks an adult grizzly. A black bear lacks it and shows a straight face in profile with longer ears, a better guide than coat color.

Hank the Tank, a 500-pound black bear, made headlines for breaking into houses in which mountain resort area?

Lake Tahoe's most famous burglar turned out to be a female, and DNA evidence showed that several bears shared the blame. She was moved to a sanctuary in Colorado.

Pedals, a wild black bear who became an internet sensation in New Jersey, was famous for doing what?

Walking upright on his hind legs was how Pedals coped with injuries to his front paws. First spotted in 2014, he was believed killed in a 2016 hunt.

Which Texas university, whose teams are called the Bears, keeps live black bears on campus as mascots?

Baylor students elected the bear as mascot in 1914, and the live animals each carry the title Judge in honor of the university's namesake, Judge R.E.B. Baylor.

Which New England school, with its main campus in Orono, calls its athletic teams the Black Bears?

University of Maine teams are the only NCAA Division I athletic program in their state, and their mascot goes by the name Bananas T. Bear.

Which US state has the largest black bear population of the 48 contiguous states, though its flag shows a grizzly?

California is black bear country today, yet the grizzly on its flag is extinct there: the last known ones were killed in the Sierra foothills in the early 1920s.

Which conservation status does the IUCN Red List give the American black bear?

Least concern is the lowest-risk category on the Red List. The American black bear's population is estimated at twice that of all other bear species combined.

The Asian black bear, a tree-climbing relative of the American black bear, has a nickname taken from which sky object?

The Moon features in the popular name moon bear. The Asian species wears a whitish or creamy chest patch that is sometimes V-shaped.

Unlike in most other mammals that hibernate, what stays close to normal in a hibernating black bear?

Body temperature stays around 95 °F, so a denned bear remains somewhat alert. Its heart, meanwhile, slows from 40 to 50 beats a minute to about 8.

Which woodland food, classed as hard mast, may a single black bear eat by the hundreds each day in autumn?

Acorns and other nuts matter so much in the fall fattening season that bears will even raid the caches of tree squirrels to get more.

The Great Smoky Mountains, with the East's densest black bear population, straddle North Carolina and which state?

Tennessee shares the national park with its neighbor, and the state line runs through the middle of it. About two bears live on every square mile of the park.

The black bears of Yosemite National Park were once famous for breaking into what in search of food?

Parked cars were easy pickings for an animal dexterous enough to work door latches and unscrew container lids, and strong enough to flip rocks more than twice its own weight.

The cub who became the living Smokey Bear was a black bear rescued from a 1950 wildfire in which state?

New Mexico's Capitan Mountains were burning when the five-pound cub was found up a tree with scorched paws. He was at first called Hotfoot Teddy.

What term do biologists use for an adult female black bear, which first breeds at three to five years old?

Sow is the standard word for a female bear. A mother keeps her cubs with her for about a year and a half before they strike out alone.

Adult black bears have few natural predators, so what is the main cause of their deaths?

Human activity, chiefly legal hunting and collisions with vehicles, accounts for most deaths. Hunters kill thousands of black bears across North America each season.

Why do attempts to move troublesome black bears to a new area typically end in failure?

They return home, apparently able to find their old range even without familiar landmarks to steer by.

White Kermode black bears catch more of which fish by day than their dark-coated kin, which the fish spot more easily?

Salmon evade a dark shape about twice as often as a white one, which gives the pale bears a daytime edge of roughly a third over their neighbors.

Mature males are the first black bears to leave their winter dens in spring; which bears emerge last?

Mothers with cubs wait longest, and those with newborns come out after those with yearlings. Higher up a mountain, every bear emerges later.

In spring, black bears regularly sniff out and prey on the newborn young of which animals?

Deer fawns are vulnerable only briefly: by about 10 days old they can outmaneuver a bear, and their scent is ignored until the next spring.

Theodore Roosevelt, a keen hunter, likened the flesh of young black bears to which more familiar meat?

Pork was his comparison, and bear meat was once so common in New York that one of the city's main markets was called Bear Market.

In experiments, black bears learned to tell colors apart faster than which famously clever primates?

Chimpanzees were slower than the bears at the color tasks, while domestic dogs kept pace. Black bears also quickly learn to tell small triangles, circles and squares apart.

What kind of predator was El Jefe, an Arizona wildlife celebrity recorded attacking and eating a black bear?

A jaguar has the advantage in an ambush, killing with a crushing bite to the skull. For about four years El Jefe was the only wild jaguar known to be living in the United States.

Which bird of prey, like bobcats and coyotes, is on record as a predator of black bear cubs?

Golden eagle attacks are rare, but one was seen snatching a yearling. Cubs are safest once their mother is awake: an angry female will drive off even a cougar.

Which Appalachian state made the black bear its official state animal after a poll of students, teachers and sportsmen?

West Virginia ran the poll in the 1950s, but the choice only became official in 1973, when the legislature passed a resolution naming the black bear.

Terrible Ted, a black bear with no teeth or claws, was made to compete in which sport for two decades?

Pro wrestling promotions across North America booked the Canadian bear from the 1950s into the 1970s. His trainer, Dave McKigney, wrestled as the Canadian Wildman.

Which 1960s TV series starred a black bear called Bruno as the huge pet of a boy played by Clint Howard?

Gentle Ben moved the action from the novel's Alaska to the Florida Everglades, where Ben lived with a wildlife officer's family. Several bears shared the role, Bruno chief among them.

Nursing black bear cubs make which contented sound, while anxious cubs squeal, bawl or scream?

A hum like a small motor signals a comfortable cub, and adults at ease produce a loud, rumbling version of the same sound.

Which newspaper printed Clifford Berryman's cartoon of Roosevelt sparing a black bear, the spark for the teddy bear?

The Washington Post ran the cartoon in November 1902. Berryman first drew a full-grown bear on a rope, then made the animal smaller and cuter in later versions.

The rare glacier bear, a black bear subspecies of southeast Alaska, is known for a coat of which color?

Silver-blue to gray fur is the only thing that sets the glacier bear apart; no other evidence supports treating it as a separate subspecies.

Black bear fat, mixed with hog lard, was once sold as a cosmetic for which purpose?

Growing hair and adding gloss were the promises. The hard white fat from deep inside the animal was the most prized, and so scarce that it was stretched with lard.

Yellow-Yellow, a small black bear in New York's Adirondacks, became notorious for opening which bear-proof products?

Canisters meant to keep backpackers' meals from bears were no match for the 125-pound animal, who worked out how to open several different models.

What do biologists call the autumn phase when feeding becomes almost a full-time job for a fattening black bear?

Hyperphagia lets a bear pack on as much as 30 pounds of fat before denning, and its weight in autumn runs about 30 percent above its spring weight.

Black bears mate in early summer, so which process postpones the pregnancy until the mother is ready to den?

Delayed implantation holds the fertilized eggs in suspension until November, when they finally settle in the womb, so the cubs arrive while their mother is denned.

In Labrador, black bears live largely off which animal, mostly taking the young, old, injured or already dead?

Caribou sustain Labrador's black bears, which also eat rodents such as voles. The diet is thought to reflect the sub-Arctic's short supply of edible plants.

The largest subspecies of black bear lives on which British Columbia archipelago, feeding on crabs and mussels?

Haida Gwaii bears grew bigger skulls and molars to crack the hard shells of the shellfish they forage along the shore, and their coats are always black.

Black bears still roam most of Canada but have been gone since 1937 from which province?

Prince Edward Island, Canada's smallest province, is the one gap in a Canadian range that otherwise still covers much of the species' original territory.

The white coat of a Kermode black bear appears only when a cub inherits which kind of gene from both parents?

Recessive genes can hide for generations, so two dark-coated parents can produce a white cub if each carries one copy of the variant.