50 Fun Facts About Hard Bear

Which naturalist formally described the polar bear as a distinct species, Ursus maritimus, in 1774?

He had sailed towards the North Pole the year before. Linnaeus had lumped it in with the brown bear in 1758 as a 'mostly-white sea bear'.

The record polar bear, shot at Kotzebue Sound, Alaska, in 1960, weighed roughly how much?

That is roughly the weight of a small car. Typical adult males run 300 to 800 kg and can add 50 percent to their mass in fat before winter.

Polar bears descended from brown bears that were isolated by glaciation roughly how long ago?

That makes it the youngest bear species. Wild grizzly-polar hybrids were confirmed by DNA in the Canadian Arctic in 2006, all traced to a single female polar bear.

A study found polar bears could swim for an average of 3.4 days at a time, covering roughly what distance?

They paddle with the broad front paws and steer with the hind legs, at up to about 6 km/h. Their eyes sit high on the head so they can stay above the surface.

Why do a polar bear's guard hairs help it float and stay warm?

The hairs are transparent, not white; the coat looks white because it scatters light and has no pigment. Underneath, the skin is black.

Which pinniped species makes up most of the polar bear's diet?

Bears wait at breathing holes and eat mainly the blubber. Bearded and harp seals are taken too, and adult males occasionally hunt young walruses.

The six ursine bears each have 74 chromosomes. How many does the giant panda have?

The spectacled bear has 52. Chromosome fusions explain the lower counts, and banding patterns helped confirm the panda is a bear rather than a raccoon relative.

What does the giant panda's binomial name, Ailuropoda melanoleuca, literally mean?

Its Chinese names have included 'spotted bear' and 'bamboo bear'. The Taiwanese name reverses the characters to 'big bear-cat'.

The panda's famous 'thumb' is actually what kind of bone?

The panda's true first digit is not opposable and lines up with the other fingers, so a wrist bone was co-opted to grip bamboo stalks.

In 1988, a private zoo in which city passed off a painted sun bear as a giant panda?

The incident is credited with popularising the Taiwanese name for the panda, 'big bear-cat'. Real pandas were then extremely rare outside China.

China's Fourth National Survey (2015) estimated how many wild giant pandas over 1.5 years old?

Adding an estimated 9.6 percent cubs gave roughly 2,060 animals. The IUCN downgraded the panda from Endangered to Vulnerable in 2016.

Roughly how much bamboo does an average giant panda eat per day?

Bamboo is so poor in energy that pandas must feed frequently and can be active at any hour, and they need at least two bamboo species in range in case one flowers and dies off.

Which group of animals is generally considered the closest living relatives of bears?

Both morphology and molecular data support the link, and the extinct otter-like amphicynodontines are treated as stem-pinnipeds close to early bears.

Bears are unique among carnivorans in lacking which feature?

They make up for it with what may be the best nose of any mammal, able to locate a carcass several kilometres away.

Which recently extinct North African population of Ursus arctos was hunted out in the 19th century?

Brown bears entered Europe about 250,000 years ago and North Africa soon after. The Californian and Mexican grizzlies were also hunted to extinction.

Which naturalist classified the grizzly as Ursus horribilis in 1815?

Lewis and Clark spelled it 'grisley', which could mean grizzled (grey-tipped) or grisly (fear-inspiring). The Latin name went with the second reading.

What is the fastest running speed reliably recorded for a grizzly bear at Yellowstone?

The often-quoted 56 km/h figure is anecdotal. Grizzly front claws run 5 to 10 cm long, roughly double a black bear's.

Roughly how many grizzlies live in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem of Wyoming, Idaho and Montana?

Another thousand or so live in the Northern Continental Divide of Montana.

Kodiak bears have been genetically isolated on their archipelago since roughly when?

They are a textbook case of island gigantism: mature males average around 500 kg and can hit 680 kg at their autumn peak.

Roughly how many brown bears live on Japan's Hokkaido island?

The species is still Least Concern globally, but the Marsican brown bear of central Italy is thought to number only about 50 animals.

A single nucleotide change in which gene makes the white 'spirit bear' variant of the Kermode bear?

The mutation is recessive, so two black parents can produce a white cub if both carry it. White Kermodes are not albinos: their skin and eyes are pigmented.

Roughly how many fully white Kermode bears are thought to exist?

They are commonest on Gribbell, Princess Royal and Roderick islands, where they make up 10 to 20 percent of the local Kermode population.

American black bears learned colour-discrimination tasks faster than which primate?

They learned as fast as domestic dogs. Black bears also have the shortest claws of any bear, which makes them the best climbers among the large species.

Per biologist Stephen Herrero, in what share of fatal black bear attacks did the bear act as a predator?

That is the opposite of grizzly attacks, which are mostly defensive surprises. Herrero found bears killed about three people a year in the US and Canada in the 1990s, versus 30 to 50 by dogs.

Hibernating bears avoid muscle wasting and can go months without urinating because they do what?

For decades bears were not counted as 'true' hibernators because their body temperature barely drops; the definition was rewritten around metabolic suppression instead.

Which Oligocene genus, around 30 to 28 million years ago, is considered ancestral to all living bears?

It arose from a Cephalogale-like ancestor and spread through Asia. Living bear lineages split from it between 15 and 20 million years ago.

Which fossil European bear of 3-4 million years ago was nearly identical to today's Asian black bear?

Two lineages evolved from it: the black bears (sun, Asian black and American black) and the brown bears, which include the polar bear.

The cave bear, Ursus spelaeus, went extinct roughly how long ago?

Unlike brown bears they were probably almost entirely herbivorous. Chauvet Cave in France holds about 300 'bear hollows' left by hibernating cave bears.

Which two extinct giant short-faced bears may have been the largest carnivorans ever in the Americas?

The spectacled bear is the only surviving member of their subfamily. Arctotherium reached South America after the Isthmus of Panama formed.

The original 1791 scientific name for the sloth bear placed it in which genus, reflecting a famous mix-up?

Its shaggy coat, long claws and habit of hanging from branches fooled early naturalists. It is now the only species in Melursus.

Sloth bear mothers do something no other bear does with their cubs. What is it?

She also carries them up trees herself as a defence against tigers rather than sending them up, and adults show off their long lips as a threat display.

The genus name Helarctos combines the Greek for 'bear' with a Greek word meaning what?

The name refers to the orange-to-cream chest patch. It is the only species in the genus, and the most arboreal of all bears.

What does 'ornatus' mean in the spectacled bear's scientific name, Tremarctos ornatus?

It refers to the pale facial markings. Quechua speakers call it ukuku or 'hole bear' because the marks make its eyes look like holes.

The Old Norse word berserkr most likely meant what?

Snorri Sturluson's 'bare-shirt' reading, meaning warriors who fought without armour, has largely been abandoned. Berserkers were outlawed in Iceland in 1015.

Sackerson, a bear from London's Paris Garden baiting arena, appears in which Shakespeare play?

Elizabeth I was a fan of the sport. Bear-baiting was finally outlawed in Britain by the Cruelty to Animals Act 1835.

Wojtek, the Polish army's enlisted bear, carried ammunition at Monte Cassino with which unit?

He was bought from a shepherd near Hamadan in Iran and rose from private to corporal. He lived out his days at Edinburgh Zoo, dying in 1963.

The live Smokey Bear was a cub rescued from a 1950 wildfire in which US state?

Burned in the Capitan Gap Fire, he was flown to the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., where he lived for 26 years. His name is protected by an Act of Congress from 1952.

In what year was Smokey Bear's slogan changed from 'forest fires' to 'wildfires'?

The 'Only YOU can prevent forest fires' line dated from 1947. The change acknowledged that huge fires were burning grasslands and other non-forest land.

Which freedman and famed hunter led the party that tied a bear to a tree for Roosevelt in 1902?

He advised Roosevelt not to shoot the tethered bear. Morris Michtom's 'Teddy's bear' toy followed, and he founded the Ideal Novelty and Toy Company.

Which two stars of the Big Dipper, Dubhe and Merak, are used to find Polaris?

In Greek myth the constellation is Callisto, turned into a bear by Hera and flung into the sky by Zeus, with her son Arcas becoming Boötes.

Lieutenant Harry Colebourn bought the cub that inspired Winnie-the-Pooh for C$20 in which Ontario town?

He named her after Winnipeg and left her at London Zoo when his regiment went to France. Christopher Robin's toy had originally been called Edward.

Michael Bond found the teddy bear that inspired Paddington on a shop shelf on which date?

He bought it for his wife because it looked forlorn, and named the character after the station near his home. A Bear Called Paddington appeared on 13 October 1958.

The sun bear's presence in China was only confirmed in 2017 by a sighting in which province?

A sun bear was sighted in Yingjiang County, Yunnan, in 2017; the species is extinct in Singapore.

Roughly how tall at the shoulder is the sun bear, the smallest of all bear species?

Sun bears stand nearly 70 cm at the shoulder and weigh just 25–65 kg.

What is the Malay and Indonesian name for the sun bear, referring to its favourite food?

Beruang madu means 'honey bear'; the sun bear extracts honey and insects with an exceptionally long tongue.

How does a threatened sun bear try to intimidate an enemy?

Sun bears stand on their hind feet and show off the orange-to-cream crescent on their chest when threatened.

In 2004 South Korea began reintroducing Asian black bears to which national park?

After local extinction by the 1990s, the reintroduction at Jiri Mountain National Park succeeded, with bears dispersing into northern forests.

The Formosan black bear, an endemic subspecies of the Asian black bear, lives on which island?

Ursus thibetanus formosanus is confined to the mountain ranges of central Taiwan.

Mitochondrial DNA suggests the short-faced bears split from the Ursinae subfamily roughly how long ago?

Tremarctine bears first appear as Plionarctos in the late Miocene; the divergence is dated to about 5.7 million years ago.

Which sense is the spectacled bear's sharpest, letting it tell from the ground when a tree is full of ripe fruit?

Spectacled bears have an extremely sensitive nose but only moderate hearing and short vision.