50 Fun Facts About Brown Bears

Brown bears can kill a moose, yet they get up to 90 percent of their food energy from what?

Plants supply most of a brown bear's calories, from berries and grasses to acorns and pine cones. No other bear has been recorded eating such a variety of foods.

Which country, home to more than half of the world's brown bears, has by far the largest population of the species?

Russia has well over 100,000 brown bears, several times the number in the United States or Canada. Fittingly, a bear is the common personification of the nation.

The extinct Atlas bear, a brown bear named after a mountain range, was the only modern bear native to which continent?

Africa's only native bear of modern times roamed the Atlas Mountains from Morocco to Libya. Hunters finished it off soon after modern firearms were developed.

A 2017 DNA test on a mummified relic said to come from which legendary creature showed it was really a brown bear?

Yeti stories of the high Himalayas overlap with a local brown bear that Nepalis call Dzu-Teh. The mummified relic tested in 2017 turned out to be one of those bears.

Which creator of The Very Hungry Caterpillar illustrated the 1967 book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?

Eric Carle was hired after author Bill Martin Jr. saw a lobster he had collaged from tissue paper for a magazine advert. The pair went on to make three sequels.

Which region is named from an ancient Greek word for 'bear', after the Great Bear constellation of the northern sky?

The Arctic gets its name from arktos, Greek for bear. The same word sits in the brown bear's scientific name, Ursus arctos, which simply says 'bear' twice in two languages.

Which Nordic country, whose epic poem the Kalevala calls the animal Otso, has the brown bear as its national animal?

Finland's national animal is the brown bear, the sacred king of the forest in its old folklore. Early Finnish tribes feared and respected it so deeply that its true name was taboo.

Brown bears in Yellowstone can each eat as many as 40,000 of which insects in a single summer day?

Moths, specifically army cutworm moths, are so rich in fat that they can supply up to half of a Yellowstone bear's food energy for the whole year.

The hump on a brown bear's shoulders, found on no other living bear, is solid muscle that powers which activity?

Digging is what the hump is for: the muscle drives the forelimbs as a bear tears up soil for roots and hollows out its winter den.

Which Alaskan archipelago's brown bears, cut off since the last ice age, are the largest brown bears in the world?

Kodiak bears are a textbook case of island gigantism: big males average around half a tonne, and the heaviest wild one on record weighed 751 kg (1,656 lb).

Coastal brown bears in Alaska grow about twice as heavy as inland bears by feasting on which spawning fish?

Salmon runs are so rich that at their peak a bear may eat only the eggs and head, leaving the rest of each fish for foxes, eagles and gulls.

Which animal is the closest living relative of brown bears, so close that the two can produce hybrid cubs in the wild?

Polar bear and brown bear are sister lineages that have swapped genes for hundreds of thousands of years. A hybrid shot in Canada's far north in 2006 proved they still interbreed.

Misha, a brown bear cub in a belt of Olympic colours, was the mascot of the 1980 Summer Games in which city?

Moscow's Games closed with a giant Misha floating out of the stadium on a cluster of balloons. A mural of the cub in the stands shed a tear as he went.

Which Swiss city has shown a bear on its coat of arms since the 1220s and has kept live bears for centuries?

Bern's founder is said to have vowed to name the city after the first animal he met on a hunt, which turned out to be a bear. The city has kept a bear pit since the 16th century.

Which European capital's coat of arms shows a bear reaching up into a strawberry tree to eat the fruit?

Madrid's bear and strawberry tree date back to the Middle Ages. The pair also appear on the badge of the football club Atlético Madrid.

Which Japanese island, home to thousands of brown bears, was the scene of the country's worst bear attack in 1915?

Hokkaido was terrorised in December 1915 by a big bear nicknamed Kesagake, which killed seven villagers before a mass hunt brought it down.

Bruno, a brown bear shot by hunters in 2006, was the first wild bear seen in which country for 170 years?

Germany had not recorded a wild bear since 1838 when Bruno wandered north across the Alps. Bavaria's leader branded him a 'problem bear' before he was shot.

Brown bears in Yellowstone routinely drive which pack-hunting predators off their fresh kills and take the carcass?

Wolves lose kills to bears so regularly that Yellowstone researchers treat a visit from a bear as a certainty. Most of these stand-offs end without bloodshed on either side.

North America's inland brown bears go by which name, a reference to the pale tips on their dark fur?

Grizzly comes from 'grizzled': the hairs on the back are dark at the base and whitish at the tip. Coastal bears of the same subspecies are usually just called brown bears.

Which old nickname for a brown bear comes from the bear character in the medieval fable of Reynard the Fox?

Bruin comes from the Middle Dutch word for 'brown'. William Caxton's English translation of the fable carried the name into the language.

Which US state's official animal is a brown bear subspecies that has not been seen there since 1924?

California named the golden bear its state animal in 1953, three decades after the last one was reported. The same bear still strides across the state flag.

Fat Bear Week, an online vote for the best-fattened brown bear, is run each autumn by which Alaskan national park?

Katmai's rangers launched the contest in 2014 as a one-day event called Fat Bear Tuesday. Fans now follow the bears on live webcams at Brooks Falls.

Apart from other bears, which big cat of eastern Asia is the one predator that adult brown bears have to fear?

Tiger and bear are wary rivals: the cats mostly pick off young or small bears, while bears have killed tigresses and their young in fights over prey.

The Gobi bear, a desert-dwelling brown bear and one of the rarest bears on Earth, survives only in which country?

Mongolia knows it as the Mazaalai. Since 1985 feed pellets have been left at desert waterholes each spring and autumn to help the last few dozen through lean months.

The Marsican brown bear, a rare and unusually calm population, lives only in the Apennine mountains of which country?

Italy's Marsican bears are the symbol of the Abruzzo national park, where a traditional local loaf, pan dell'orso, is named 'bear bread' after them.

Scientists once watched a wild brown bear pick up a barnacle-covered rock and use it as a tool for what?

Scratching itself with the rock, the bear gave researchers their one recorded case of tool use by the species. Brown bears have one of the largest brains for their size of any carnivore.

Brown bears are usually busiest around dawn and dusk, but those living close to people shift most activity to when?

Bears near towns and roads move mostly at night, a switch that keeps them out of people's way. Where humans are scarce, youngsters are often out all day.

Which ancient people used brown bears to execute criminals and sent them into arenas to fight other animals?

Romans staged the fights before thousands of spectators, and gladiators were also sent in against bears in duels to the death.

Which Scandinavian man's name, made famous worldwide by a Swedish tennis champion, is simply the word for 'bear'?

Björn means 'bear', and tennis great Björn Borg carried the name around the world. In Sweden a Björn is often nicknamed Nalle, which means 'teddy bear'.

Which Indigenous people hand-raised a brown bear cub for iomante, a ceremony meant to send its spirit back to the gods?

Ainu villagers raised the cub almost like a child, at first indoors, before the ceremony returned its soul to the god-world. Its meat and pelt were seen as the bear's parting gift.

Which naturalist gave the brown bear its scientific name in the 1758 edition of his Systema Naturae?

Carl Linnaeus named the species in 1758. Later zoologists proposed as many as 90 subspecies, a tangle so bad that few authorities list the same set.

Brown bears first reached North America from Asia by crossing which Ice Age land bridge, now under the sea?

Beringia joined Siberia to Alaska when sea levels were low. Bears crossed it in several waves, and fossils show they once ranged as far east as Ohio, Kentucky and Labrador.

Along the beaches of Alaska's estuaries, brown bears regularly turn over the sand to feed on which shellfish?

Clams are a regular meal for bears on the coast, which eat crabs as well. Inland bears use the same long claws to unearth roots and bulbs instead.

Which volcanic peninsula on Asia's Pacific coast is famous for the abundance and size of its brown bears?

Kamchatka's bears are the biggest in Eurasia: large males reach at least 650 kg (1,430 lb), a match for the island giants of Alaska.

Which English monarch, a keen spectator of bear-baiting, overruled Parliament when it tried to ban the sport on Sundays?

Elizabeth I had bear-baiting laid on during her tours of the country. Britain did not outlaw the blood sport until the Cruelty to Animals Act of 1835.

In which Brothers Grimm tale is a prince, bewitched by a wicked dwarf, trapped in the body of a bear?

Snow-White and Rose-Red shelter the bear by their fire through the winter. The spell breaks when he kills the dwarf, who had stolen his precious stones.

Bart the Bear, a brown bear seen at the 1998 Oscars, joined Anthony Hopkins in Legends of the Fall and which thriller?

The Edge was judged the high point of Bart's career by one film critic. His trainers said Hopkins respected the 1,500-pound bear like a fellow actor.

From summer to autumn a brown bear can double its weight in an eating binge that biologists call what?

Hyperphagia can pile on up to 180 kg (400 lb) of fat, the reserve a bear lives on through its winter sleep.

The Syrian brown bear is the bear of the Bible, where two she-bears maul youths who mocked which prophet's baldness?

Elisha is jeered on the road in the Second Book of Kings, and two female bears come out of the woods and maul 42 of the mockers.

Which English poet published The Three Bears in 1837, the tale whose title animals are usually drawn as brown bears?

Robert Southey's intruder was a foul-mouthed old woman, not a little girl. Goldilocks arrived only in later retellings, and his three bears were bachelors rather than a family.

Which French director auditioned fifty animals before casting Bart the Bear in the title role of his 1988 film The Bear?

Jean-Jacques Annaud stayed impressed with Bart even after the bear injured him when he stepped into the enclosure, against the trainers' orders, to pose for publicity photos.

Which bear won the first Fat Bear contest in 2014 and had added three more titles by 2021?

Otis, known to rangers as bear 480, took the title in 2014, 2016, 2017 and 2021. Voters judge each bear by photos taken before and after its summer of feasting.

The last dancing bears of which Balkan country were moved in 2007 to a sanctuary at Belitsa, run by Four Paws?

Bulgaria had outlawed the practice in 1998, yet it took nine more years to bring the last bears to the sanctuary. Britain had banned dancing bears back in 1911.

Which colour names the Tibetan subspecies of brown bear, once known in the West only from a few furs and bones?

Blue bears of the Tibetan Plateau are among the rarest bears in the world and are seldom sighted in the wild. They are also known as horse bears.

In Greek myth, which nymph was turned into a bear and later set among the stars as the Great Bear?

Callisto was transformed by the jealous wife of Zeus in Ovid's telling. She was about to be speared by her own son, out hunting, when Zeus lifted her into the sky as Ursa Major.

Which country put a brown bear on the reverse of its 5-kuna coin, first minted in 1993?

Croatia's 5-kuna coin carried the bear for thirty years, until the country swapped the kuna for the euro in 2023.

Brown bears, common in Ice Age Britain, may have helped push which bigger relative to extinction there?

Cave bear and brown bear split from a common ancestor more than a million years ago. Competition from the smaller species was one of several pressures on its bulkier cousin.

After the Second World War, Wojtek the soldier bear lived out his days in the zoo of which Scottish city?

Edinburgh Zoo took Wojtek in 1947, and old comrades who visited would toss him cigarettes, just as they had in the army. The city later approved a bronze statue of him.

Why do adult male brown bears sometimes kill young bears that they did not father themselves?

To mate with their mother is the usual motive: a female who loses her young comes back into season within two to four days. She often fights off males twice her weight.

A brown bear mates in early summer, yet her fertilised egg floats free for six months through which process?

Delayed implantation lets the embryo wait until the female is denned for winter. If she has not put on enough fat by then, it never attaches and is reabsorbed.