50 Fun Facts About Grizzly Bears

The word 'grizzly', often confused with 'grisly', is usually taken to describe what about the grizzly bear?

The name points to its grey-tipped fur: 'grizzled' means streaked with grey. Early explorers spelled it 'grisley', which left room for both readings.

Grizzly bears belong to the order Carnivora, yet what may make up 80 to 90 percent of their diet?

Plants such as grasses, roots and berries dominate the menu, even though a grizzly has a carnivore's digestive system. Meat matters most where salmon or elk calves are easy to get.

A grizzly bear reliably clocked at 30 mph in Yellowstone would outrun which of these over a short dash?

An Olympic sprinter would lose: Usain Bolt's fastest recorded burst was just under 28 mph. A racing greyhound tops 40 mph and a pronghorn passes 50.

Which US state's flag shows a grizzly bear, although the state's last wild grizzlies vanished in the 1920s?

California put a grizzly on its flag, said to be modelled on Monarch, a bear caught in 1889 and kept in San Francisco. The state's last grizzly was reportedly shot in 1922.

What does the US National Park Service tell hikers to do if a grizzly bear attacks them?

Play dead, lying flat on your stomach with your hands clasped behind your neck and your pack still on. With a black bear the advice flips: fight back.

What do female grizzly bears do in the winter den, partway through five to seven months of hibernation?

They give birth, usually to twins, and the newborns nurse on rich milk while she fasts until spring. Mating happened months earlier, in the summer.

A 'pizzly', a hybrid first confirmed in the wild in 2006, is a grizzly crossed with which other animal?

A polar bear and a grizzly produced the pale animal shot on Banks Island in Canada's Arctic, as DNA tests proved. The hybrids are also called grolar bears.

A grizzly bear's bite, measured at over 1,100 psi, is often said to be strong enough to crush what?

A bowling ball is the usual yardstick for the bite's eight megapascals of pressure. Even so, grizzlies use that bite mostly on roots, berries and carcasses.

Which insects do Yellowstone grizzly bears eat by the tens of thousands a day on high mountain slopes?

Moths, specifically army cutworm moths, can supply up to half of a Yellowstone bear's yearly calories. One bear may lick up 40,000 of the fat-rich insects in a single day.

The grizzly is a North American population of which species, also found from Scandinavia to Japan?

The brown bear, Ursus arctos, is a single species right around the Northern Hemisphere. Naturalists once split North America's grizzlies into as many as 86 species.

Which feature, absent in black bears, is the quickest way to recognise a grizzly bear from its outline?

A shoulder hump made entirely of muscle drives the forelegs, giving grizzlies extra force for digging. Other clues are a dished face and a rump lower than the shoulders.

Which grizzly bears are responsible for about 70 percent of the human deaths caused by grizzlies?

Mothers with cubs attack to protect their young, not to feed. Most other maulings also begin with a bear surprised at very close range, often while it guards a food supply.

An adult female grizzly bear goes by which name, borrowed from the farmyard?

Sow is the term, and an adult male is a boar, both borrowed from the farmyard. She usually raises her litter of one to four alone, for up to two years.

Leonardo DiCaprio won his first Oscar for which 2015 film, in which a grizzly bear mauls his character?

The Revenant won DiCaprio the Best Actor award and Alejandro G. Iñárritu a second straight Best Director Oscar. The story grew out of a real mauling on the American frontier in 1823.

The NBA's Memphis Grizzlies kept their name after moving in 2001 from which Canadian city?

Vancouver's team was nearly called the Mounties, until the Royal Canadian Mounted Police objected. The Grizzlies joined the NBA in 1995 and left for Tennessee after six seasons.

Grizzly bears once ranged as far south as which country, where they were regarded as extinct by 1964?

Mexico had its own silver-coated grizzly, known in Spanish as el oso plateado. Trapped, shot and poisoned for taking cattle, it was already scarce by the 1930s.

Which predator, returned to Yellowstone in 1995, often loses its elk kills to grizzly bears?

The gray wolf pack often yields when a grizzly follows its nose to the carcass. One animal may distract the bear with nips at its hind legs while the rest snatch a meal.

Which Alaskan island's bears, cut off since the last ice age, grow larger than mainland grizzlies?

Kodiak bears have been isolated for at least 10,000 years, and a big male can stand nearly ten feet tall on its hind legs. Only one other bear on Earth rivals them for size.

Which explorers, crossing the American West in 1804–06, first described the grizzly, spelling it 'grisley'?

Lewis and Clark's spelling left later readers unsure what the name was meant to say. Their expedition described more than 200 plant and animal species new to science.

Bear spray, carried by hikers in grizzly country, gets its burn from a chemical found in what?

Chili peppers supply capsaicin, the irritant that makes up 1 to 2 percent of the spray. In an Alaskan study it stopped a bear's unwanted behaviour in 92 percent of cases.

Which US state, whose university teams are the Grizzlies, made the grizzly bear its state animal in 1983?

Montana let its schoolchildren vote, and the grizzly won. The state also holds the largest grizzly population in the lower 48.

Which skill, easy for black bears, do adult grizzly bears largely lose because of their weight and long claws?

Climbing trees gets hard as a grizzly's bulk increases and its claws grow long and blunt. Rather than flee upward as black bears do, an adult grizzly tends to stand its ground.

Until the 1970s, Yellowstone grizzly bears gathered to feed at which human-made sites inside the park?

Garbage dumps taught the bears to link people with food, which was bad for both. In 1970 the park began closing them and fitting bear-proof bins to return the animals to natural foods.

A newborn grizzly bear, tiny beside an adult male weighing a quarter of a ton, weighs roughly how much?

One pound, about 450 grams, is typical for a newborn. After two years at its parent's side it may weigh around 100 pounds.

Before settlers pushed them into the mountains, grizzly bears roamed which vast region east of the Rockies?

The Great Plains were once grizzly country, as were the southwestern states. Counting Canada and the United States together, grizzlies now occupy about half of their historical range.

Under which US law were grizzly bears in the lower 48 states listed as threatened in 1975?

The Endangered Species Act made it illegal to harm, harass or kill them except in self-defence. By then only 700 to 800 grizzlies were left south of Canada.

When a grizzly bear rears up on its hind legs near a hiker, what is it usually doing?

Looking and sniffing is the point: the bear stands to get a better view and smell of whatever it has noticed. Park rangers call a standing bear curious, not threatening.

Ancestors of the grizzly bear reached North America from Eurasia across which Ice Age land bridge?

Beringia linked Siberia and Alaska when ice-age sea levels fell, letting the bears walk across. Later waves from Eurasia repopulated Alaska after the last glacial peak.

The 1976 horror film Grizzly, about a man-eating bear in a national forest, was seen as copying which hit?

Jaws had been a huge success the year before, and Grizzly reused many of its plot devices. In place of the shark it offered a bear said to stand 18 feet tall.

Two fatal grizzly bear attacks on one August night in 1967 struck campers in which US national park?

Glacier had recorded no fatal bear attack in its 57-year history before that night. The two separate deaths led to the first modern bear management rules.

George Ord gave the grizzly bear which Latin name in 1815, a nod to its fearsome character?

Ursus horribilis was Ord's label in the first systematic zoology of America written by an American. In the same 1815 work he gave the pronghorn its first scientific description.

What do biologists call the autumn feeding frenzy in which a grizzly bear can gain 400 pounds before denning?

Hyperphagia packs on the fat a grizzly lives on all winter, since it does not eat in the den. Inland bears spend nearly half their lives denned up.

Yellowstone grizzly bears raid rodent caches for the fatty seeds of which high-mountain tree?

Whitebark pine nuts are a key food before hibernation. The tree's decline was a reason a judge gave in 2009 for restoring federal protection to Yellowstone's bears.

At which waterfall in Alaska's Katmai National Park do grizzly bears catch leaping salmon in their mouths?

Brooks Falls forces the salmon to bunch up at its base, which makes them easy targets. Big males fight for the best fishing spots, and a webcam streams the action each summer.

Which frontiersman, mauled by a grizzly bear in 1823, crawled some 200 miles to Fort Kiowa?

Hugh Glass set his own broken leg and let maggots clean his wounds along the way. The tale first appeared in a Philadelphia literary journal in 1825, and its accuracy has been disputed.

Which German director made the 2005 documentary Grizzly Man, about bear enthusiast Timothy Treadwell?

Werner Herzog built the film from more than 100 hours of Treadwell's own footage. Treadwell spent 13 summers among Alaska's bears before one killed him in 2003.

Grizzly 399, a roadside bear followed by dozens of photographers until 2024, lived in which national park?

Grand Teton was home to 399 for 28 years, and in 2020, aged 24, she emerged with a litter of four. She died when a vehicle struck her south of Jackson, Wyoming.

Which Canadian national park's wildlife crossings on the Trans-Canada Highway did grizzly bears learn to use?

Banff's crossings saw grizzly passages rise from seven in 1996 to more than 100 in 2006. The animals needed years to get comfortable with the structures.

On the tidal flats of Alaska's coast, grizzly bears dig into the sand for which shellfish?

Clams, especially razor clams, round out a coastal menu of salmon, sedges and berries. Bear-watchers on the Alaska Peninsula visit the flats to see the digging.

Why do grizzly bears rub their backs against particular trees, sometimes clawing and biting the bark as well?

To leave their scent is the main purpose: a rub tree works as a message board for other bears. Bark may be strewn around the trunk to draw attention to the post.

In Alaska's Denali National Park, grizzly bears famously chase, pounce on and dig up which small mammals?

Ground squirrels of the Arctic species are the best-known small prey of Denali's bears. Elsewhere grizzlies flip rocks to reach hoary marmots, sometimes while the marmots hibernate.

To estimate grizzly bear numbers without capturing animals, researchers snag samples of what for DNA testing?

Hair snagged as bears pass by yields enough DNA to tell individuals apart. In 2000 such a study showed Alberta's grizzlies were increasing faster than had been believed.

Grizzly bears mate in summer, yet the embryo pauses its growth until denning time, thanks to which process?

Delayed implantation ties pregnancy to body fat: if the female is underfed by denning time, she can miscarry. It is one reason grizzlies have among the lowest reproductive rates of North American land mammals.

Which fish do grizzly bears catch as it spawns in the streams that feed Yellowstone Lake?

Cutthroat trout give Yellowstone's inland bears a rare taste of spawning fish. Invasive lake trout now threaten the native population the bears rely on.

Like humans, grizzly bears walk with the whole sole of the foot on the ground, a stance called what?

Plantigrade feet set bears apart from most other land carnivores, such as dogs and cats, which walk on their toes. Bears carry more weight on the hind feet, hence the lumbering gait.

Which Alaskan island, known for its dense grizzly population, has a Native name meaning 'fortress of bears'?

Admiralty Island holds about 1,600 grizzlies, roughly one for every square mile. Visitors watch them from a platform at Pack Creek.

Which naturalist mourned the killing of a grizzly bear on Arizona's Escudilla Mountain in A Sand County Almanac?

Aldo Leopold wrote that a government trapper's kill left Escudilla only a mountain. Grizzlies have since disappeared from most of the American Southwest.

Which bear of Alaska's Katmai National Park won the online Fat Bear Week contest four times between 2014 and 2021?

Otis, also known as Bear 480, was loved for his patient fishing style, and Katmai named a fund after him. The contest began in 2014 as a single day called Fat Bear Tuesday.

In the 1970s TV series The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams, what is the name of Adams's grizzly bear companion?

Ben, named after Benjamin Franklin, was played by a bear called Bozo. The series starred Dan Haggerty as a woodsman who fled to the mountains after a false murder charge.

Old Ephraim, a livestock-raiding grizzly bear who evaded hunters for a decade, was killed in 1923 in which state?

Utah remembers him as one of its last grizzlies. He roamed Logan Canyon, was also called Old Three Toes for a deformed foot, and was finally trapped by a sheepherder.