Brown Bear

:CONTENTS:
 
 
Brown Bear's
Brown Bear's Body
Brown Bear's Food Strategies
Hibernation
    Other types of Brown Bear:
The Giant Bear's of  "Kamchatka"
Asian Bear's
Higuma, The Brown Bear of Japan
 
 
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Brown Bear's
 
Brown Bear's
 

   The brown bear (Ursus arctos) has the widest distribution of all bears in the world.  Its range includes much of the Northern Hemisphere, from the edges of the arctic seas of North America, Europe, and Asia, south over tundra covered mountains, across the boreal forests of Canada and the Soviet Union, down as far as Mexico, Spain, and Iran.  On both continents, the southern edges of its range are marked widely scattered, isolated populations.  Although brown bears may be found in a variety of habits, they generally prefer regions punctuated by river valleys, mountain forests, and pen meadows.
 

 
The Brown Bear's Body
  the brown bear is stout and rather chunky in shape, with a large hump of fat and muscle over the shoulders and very long claws.  It has a wide, massive head that some people describe as being somewhat ‘dish faced" in appearance.  That big head is equipped with extremely powerful jaws.  I once saw a big male, trapped in a leg snare set by researchers, take out its frustration on some neighboring trees.
 
 
 
Brown Bear food Strategies
  Practically anything edible is grist to the brown bear's meal.  To fuel such a large body, the bears must consume a lot of calories up to 80 or 90 pounds (36 to 41 kg) of food a day during the peak of the season.  By eating this much food, a big bear can gain from 3 to 6 pounds (1.25 to 2.75 kg) of fat in a 24 hour period.  Physiologically, they are driven to gain at this rapid rate, because the time of summer abundance is very short and the winters long.
 
 
 
Brown Bear Hibernation
  In all parts of their range, except perhaps in eastern turkey and Iran, brown bears spend the winter months hibernating in dens.  At the beginning of the denning season, they may have 6 to 10 inches (15 to 25 cm) of fat under their skin.  Den sites are usually remote, isolated from human activity and development.  Noise from machinery and aircraft is disturbing and may force some bears  to avoid the area for future denning.  In the soviet Union, brown bears that have not found a denning site are considered particularly dangerous.
  Rock caves and hollows excavated under large trees or dug horizontally into hillsides are the commonest types of dens.  Often they contain a short tunnel leading to the sleeping chamber.  Depending upon the size of the bear, a sleeping chamber can measure over 7 feet wide and 3 feet high (2 m by 1 m).  Some dens have been used for century  by numerous generations of bears.
   In the more northern parts of their range, brown bears will sometimes den as early as the middle of September.  Farther south, denning may be as late as October or November.  When he bears emerge in April or may, they head for the nearest place where they might expect to find food.
 
 
 
Other Types  of Brown Bear:
 
 
The Giant bears of Kamchatka
  The rugged Kamchatka Peninsula is a great finger of land jutting south from eastern Russia into the sea of  north of Japan.  The majority of Kamchatka bears are relatively small animals, comparable to those of northern Europe.  But native legends tell of a giant race of black colored bears, some of which weigh more than 2,500 pounds (1,134 kg.).  The first scientific evidence that brown bear this size might really exist was presented during the 1950’s in a report about the investigations of Dr. Stan Bergman of the State Museum of Natural  History at Stockholm, who spent two years on the Kamchatka Peninsula. Apparently the bears were either hard to approach or very scarce because Dr. Bergman never saw a living specimen.  He was, however, able to photograph a bear's footprint in the snow. It left a track 15 inches (38 cm) long and 10 inches (25 cm) wide.  Based on his measurements, this bear would have been much bigger than the largest known Kodiak bears living just across the Bearing Strait.
 
 
Asian Bears:
  In the northern mountains of India and in other parts of the Himalayas lives a reddish colored brown bear very similar to the American grizzly.  Called the red bear (Ursus arctos isabelinus) by the people of the region, it is about the size of a large grizzly, ranging from 5.5 to 8 feet (1.7 to 2.5 cm) in length.
  Other races of asian brown bears include the little known Manchurian brown bear (Ursus arctos manchuricus) and the so-called horse bear  (Ursus arctos pruinosus) of Tibet, Sichuan, and other western province of China.  This bear is often bicolored, with yellow brown or whitish cape forming a saddle shaped marking across its shoulders.  Horse bears are very much feared in the regions where they are found.
 
Higuma, The Brown Bear of Japan
  The brown bears are found only on Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost island.  But this island of a little more than 30,000 square miles (77,000 sq. km) has nearly four times the brown bear population of the entire continental United States!
 
 
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by: John Froilan Reyes