Black Bears
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50 free Black Bears trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The black bear is the bear most North Americans are likely to meet, whether on a forest trail, at a campground or on the evening news. It is smaller and shyer than its fearsome reputation suggests, yet it is strong, clever and far more varied in appearance than its name lets on. This quiz covers the whole animal: what black bears eat, how they get through the winter, how their cubs grow up, where they live and how to stay safe around them. It also looks at the bears that became celebrities, mascots and legends, from wartime pets to internet stars. It suits hikers, campers, wildlife watchers, students and anyone who enjoys a good animal quiz. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will finish knowing more than when you started.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01A black bear cub that a Canadian army vet left at London Zoo during World War I inspired which storybook character?
Winnie-the-Pooh
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.
Q 02The living Smokey Bear, a rescued black bear cub, got so much mail that the Postal Service gave him what?
A ZIP Code
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.
Q 03The fur of the Canadian black bear is used to make the tall ceremonial caps worn by which British soldiers?
The Foot Guards
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.
Q 04The black bear that inspired the film Cocaine Bear died after eating smugglers' drugs in which southern state?
Georgia
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.
Q 05Safety experts advise doing what if a black bear attacks, the opposite of the usual advice for a grizzly?
Fight back
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.
Q 06Which sense is a black bear's keenest, rated about seven times more sensitive than a domestic dog's?
Smell
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.
Q 07Up to 85 percent of a black bear's diet is made up of what, despite the animal's fearsome reputation?
Vegetation
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.
Q 08The teddy bear got its name after President Theodore Roosevelt refused to shoot a black bear on a hunt in which state?
Mississippi
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.
Q 09What name is given to the rare white-coated black bears of coastal British Columbia, the province's official mammal?
Spirit bear
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.
Q 10Black bear cubs are usually born in which months, while their mother is still inside her winter den?
January and February
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.
Q 11Black bears use their short, curved claws for which skill, relied on to feed, escape enemies and even hibernate?
Climbing trees
Climbing trees comes so naturally that black bears rank among the most arboreal of all bear species, although the skill declines as they age.
Q 12Black bears will gnaw through a trunk to reach which favorite food when their paws cannot get to it?
Honey
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.
Q 13Only about 70 percent of black bears are black; which spice names the species' reddish color phase?
Cinnamon
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.
Q 21The Asian black bear, a tree-climbing relative of the American black bear, has a nickname taken from which sky object?
The Moon
The Moon features in the popular name moon bear. The Asian species wears a whitish or creamy chest patch that is sometimes V-shaped.
Q 22Unlike in most other mammals that hibernate, what stays close to normal in a hibernating black bear?
Body temperature
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.
Q 23Which woodland food, classed as hard mast, may a single black bear eat by the hundreds each day in autumn?
Acorns
Q 14Which feature of a grizzly, absent on even the largest black bear, helps hikers tell the two species apart?
A shoulder hump
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.
Q 15Hank the Tank, a 500-pound black bear, made headlines for breaking into houses in which mountain resort area?
Lake Tahoe
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.
Q 16Pedals, a wild black bear who became an internet sensation in New Jersey, was famous for doing what?
Walking upright
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.
Q 17Which Texas university, whose teams are called the Bears, keeps live black bears on campus as mascots?
Baylor
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.
Q 18Which New England school, with its main campus in Orono, calls its athletic teams the Black Bears?
University of Maine
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.
Q 19Which US state has the largest black bear population of the 48 contiguous states, though its flag shows a grizzly?
California
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.
Q 20Which conservation status does the IUCN Red List give the American black bear?
Least concern
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.
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.
Q 24The Great Smoky Mountains, with the East's densest black bear population, straddle North Carolina and which state?
Tennessee
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.
Q 25The black bears of Yosemite National Park were once famous for breaking into what in search of food?
Parked cars
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.
Q 26The cub who became the living Smokey Bear was a black bear rescued from a 1950 wildfire in which state?
New Mexico
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.
Q 27What term do biologists use for an adult female black bear, which first breeds at three to five years old?
Sow
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.
Q 28Adult black bears have few natural predators, so what is the main cause of their deaths?
Human activity
Human activity, chiefly legal hunting and collisions with vehicles, accounts for most deaths. Hunters kill thousands of black bears across North America each season.
Q 29Why do attempts to move troublesome black bears to a new area typically end in failure?
They return home
They return home, apparently able to find their old range even without familiar landmarks to steer by.
Q 30White Kermode black bears catch more of which fish by day than their dark-coated kin, which the fish spot more easily?
Salmon
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.