65 Awesome and Amazing Facts About Bear | Amazing Facts 4U
- Bears are descended from small, insect-eating mammals which lived during the time of the dinosaurs.
- The first true bears evolved from heavy bear-like dogs around 27 million years ago.
- The Eight Species of Bears are Malayan Sun Bear, Sloth Bear, Spectacled Bear, American Black Bear, Brown or Grizzly Bear, Polar Bear, Asiatic Black Bear, Giant Panda.
- Of the eight bear species, four live in the Southern Hemisphere and four in the Northern Hemisphere.
- North America is home to three of the world’s eight bear species: brown, American black, and polar bears.
- Almost two-thirds of the bears in the world live in North America.
- Located in Southeast Alaska near the city of Juneau, Admiralty Island is over 4,100 square kilometers (1,600 sq mi) and home to the largest population density of brown bears in North America with approximately one bear per square mile.
- Spectacled bears are the only wild bears that live in South America.
- Amazingly bears have never lived in Australia or Antarctica. Although bears do not currently live in Africa, bear fossils have been found there. Nobody knows why they are not found in Africa.
- Most bears have 42 teeth about 10 more than people have. A bear’s canines can reach 1.5″ long, while a human’s are less than a half-inch long.
- Amazingly the most accurate way to determine the age of a bear is to count the rings in a cross-section of its tooth root under a microscope.
- Bears have two layers of fur. A short layer of fur keeps the bear warm and a long layer keeps water away from the skin and short fur.
- Amazingly bears have never lived in Australia or Antarctica. They are found only in the Arctic.
- A male bear is called a boar or a he-bear. A female bear is called a sow or a she-bear. A group of bears is called a sleuth or sloth.
- Bears are highly intelligent animals. Bears are very smart and have been known to roll rocks into bear traps to set off the trap and eat the bait in safety.
- Bears live as long as 30 years in the wild. One captive brown bear lived to the age of 47.
- Bears are bowlegged. This gives them better grip and balance. Bears can walk short distances on their hind legs.
- The bear that a person living in North America is most likely to run into is the black bear. They live in wooded areas in every Canadian province, many U.S. states, and parts of Mexico.
- Black bears are not always black. They come in a rainbow of colors from black to reddish brown (cinnamon bears) to light brown to white.
- The world’s most widely distributed bear is the brown bear. However, the American black bear is the world’s most common bear species.
- The polar bears (Ursus maritimus) are the largest land predators on earth. A male polar bear can measure up to 10 feet long and weigh 700 Kg which is about the weight of eight human adults. Female polar bears are up to 50% smaller than the males.
- Polar bears live only north of the Equator, in the Arctic. Approximately 21,000 to 28,000 polar bears live in the Arctic.
- The largest mammalian carnivore that ever lived on land was the giant short-faced bear which was twice the size of the biggest modern bear. It died around 12,000 years ago.
- Bears can see almost as well as humans, and they can hear a little better.
- Unlike many mammals, bears can see in color.
- Bears have non-retractable claws like dogs and unlike cats.
- Bears that climb, such as black bears, have claws that are curved and strong to allow them to claw at tree bark.
- Bears that dig, such as grizzly bears, have straight and long claws.
- Like people, all bears except pandas walk by putting their feet flat on the ground. This kind of walking is called “plantigrade.”
- In contrast to bears, other large animals including dogs, horses, and even elephants walk on their toes.
- The Sun bear (Helarctos malayanus) also known as honey bears is the smallest of the bears and is about the size of a large dog. It gets its name from a blond chest patch of fur that looks like a setting sun.
- The Sun bear is the smallest of the bears yet Sun bears have the longest claws of any bear. They also have the longest tongues, which can reach 9.8″ long.
- All polar bears alive today can trace their ancestry back to one female brown bear who lived in Ireland 50,000 years ago.
- Although polar bears appear white, their fur is actually transparent. It only appears white, because it reflects visible light. Under their fur, polar bear skin is actually black.
- To humans and other animals that can see only in visible light, the bears appear to blend in with their snowy surroundings. But reindeer, which polar bears sometimes prey on, can see in ultraviolet light, which makes polar bears stand out from their snowy environment.
- Polar Bears are nearly undetectable by infrared cameras, due to their transparent fur.
- The amazing fact is that all polar bears are left-handed.
- Only the polar bear is a true carnivore. All other bears are omnivores, or animals that eat both plants and meat.
- Polar bears rely on sea ice to hunt and global warming could melt enough sea ice to lead to the disappearance of two-thirds of polar bears by 2050. The decline in sea ice has already forced the bears to swim longer distances consuming energy they cannot afford to use.
- Bears have been known to eat almost anything, including snowmobile seats, engine oil, and rubber boots.
- Amazingly a polar bear can swim up to 100 miles without resting. Polar bears can also swim very well underwater.
- Polar bears are the only bear species that is a marine mammal.
- Polar bears have a thick coat with amazing 9500 hairs per square inch.
- Not all bears hibernate. A bear’s normal heartbeat is 40 beats per minute but a hibernating bear’s heart rate drops to 8 beats per minute.
- The amazing fact is that during hibernation, a bear does not defecate. Its body can somehow recycle body waste into protein. This process hasn’t been fully understood.
- Polar bear livers contain so much Vitamin A that it can be fatal if eaten by a human.
- The amazing fact is that a bear’s sense of smell is around 100 times greater than a human’s. The fact is that polar bears can track down an odor from 20 miles (32 km) away. They can smell a dead seal under 3 feet of solid ice.
- While most bears have bare feet, the paws of polar bears have fur on the bottoms and between the toes. Bears lose most of their heat from their paws.
- A swimming polar bear can jump 8 ft. (2.4 m) out of the water to surprise a seal.
- Amazingly bears can run up to 40 miles per hour, fast enough to catch a running horse. The fastest human on earth can only run at 27 mph.
- Sloth bears’ favorite food is termites. These bears have no front teeth, so they easily suck out insects from their nests like a vacuum cleaner. They can also seal their nostrils for better suction.
- A grizzly bear gives birth while in winter sleep.
- About 98% of the grizzly bear population in the U.S. lives in Alaska.
- When bears mate, the eggs within the female’s body are fertilized but do not implant in her uterus and begin developing for several months outside it.
- A newly born Kodiak brown bear can weigh only 500 gm. As it grows up, its weight may increase as much as 1,000 times.
- Once bears breed, they go their separate ways. Male bears do not help the mother bear raise the cubs.
- Amazingly there’s a shark species in Greenland that eats polar bears and can live up to 200 years.
- DNA studies have proved that The Giant Panda is a type of bear.
- Koala bears almost exclusively eat only eucalyptus leaves and nothing else. They are not bears at all and are not related to the bear family. They are marsupials.
- President Theodore Roosevelt had a pet bear while in office.
- When U.S. President Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt refused to shoot a black bear cub on a hunting trip, a cartoon featured the event, and soon toy manufacturers popularized “Teddy’s bear.”
- Residents of Churchill, Canada, leave their cars unlocked to offer an escape for pedestrians who might encounter Polar Bears.
- License plates in the Canadian Northwest Territories are shaped like polar bears.
- A gallbladder of an Asiatic black bear killed in South Korea sold at a public auction for $64,000. On a price per gram basis, bear gallbladders often cost more than gold.
- Currently, approximately 8,000 bears are kept on “bear farms” in China to extract bile from the gallbladders for medicinal use through a catheter surgically implanted into the gallbladder.
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