The brown bear is a large bear of northern Eurasia and North America, and in the US it's best known as the grizzly. Alaska holds about 30,000 brown bears, while the lower 48 states have only around 2,000 grizzlies, mostly in Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho, with a handful in Washington. Its closest living relative is the polar bear.
Appearance
- Appearance
- Coat color runs from cream to reddish to nearly black. Grizzlies often have silver- or golden-tipped , which give the 'grizzled' look. Look for the muscular shoulder hump, a dished face, and long front claws of about 2–2.4 in (5–6 cm).
Look-alikes
American black bearUrsus americanus
Don't go by color, since black bears can be brown or cinnamon. A grizzly has a shoulder hump, a dished face, and longer, straighter front claws. A black bear has no hump and a straighter face profile.
Why they get mixed upBrown-phase black bears share grizzly country in the West.
Where it lives
- Typical habitats
- Forests
- Mountains and alpine meadows
- Coasts and river valleys
- Tundra
- Range
- In the US, brown bears live throughout much of Alaska. In the lower 48, grizzlies survive in the Greater Yellowstone area (Wyoming, Idaho, Montana), Montana's Northern Continental Divide, and small populations in northern Idaho and northeastern Washington.
- Preferred conditions
- They like semi-open country mixed with forest, from sea level up to about 16,000 ft (5,000 m) in the Himalayas.
- Seasons
In the US
Breeding May–Jul
Behavior
- Diet
- Mostly plants: berries, grasses, roots, nuts, and pine seeds. They also eat insects, carrion, fish, and young or weak elk and moose. In coastal Alaska, spawning salmon are a main food, and in summer some Yellowstone-area grizzlies feed almost entirely on army cutworm moths gathered on high mountain slopes.
- Activity
- Bears enter dens from October to December and come out from March to May, spending 4–6 months in winter dormancy. Mothers with cubs usually emerge last.
- Social life
- Solitary, except for mating and mothers raising cubs.
Life cycle
- Breeding season
- Mating runs from mid-May to early July. The fertilized egg doesn't implant until the bear dens for winter.
- Litter size
- Usually 1–3 cubs, born in the den in late January or early February. Newborns weigh only about 12–18 oz (350–510 g).
- Time to maturity
- Females mature at 4–8 years. In North America, cubs stay with their mother for about 2.5 years on average.
- Lifespan
- About 25 years in the wild
Name and classification
- About the name
- 'Grizzly' is the common name for the inland North American brown bear (U. a. horribilis). Coastal Alaskan 'brown bears' and inland grizzlies belong to the same species. The Kodiak bear (U. a. middendorffi) lives only on the Kodiak Archipelago.
Conservation
- IUCN Red List
- LCLeast ConcernLow risk of extinction
- Status
- Grizzlies in the lower 48 states are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. By 1975 only about 700–800 remained there, down from a far wider range. Harming or killing one is illegal except in self-defense.
Culture and stories
- Culture and stories
- A grizzly appears on California's state flag, a symbol carried over from the short-lived Bear Flag Republic, yet California's own grizzlies were wiped out by the early 1920s.
More species to explore
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