Guest Blogger, Richard Freeman presents:

Guest Blogger, Richard Freeman presents:

SOME INTERESTING BLACK BEAR FACTS

1. Unlike the more ferocious brown bear, the black bear usually backs away from confrontations with other animals. There are many cases of them having been chased off by domestic dogs, and on one occasion a black bear was treed by a tom cat whom the bear outweighed 40 times.

2. Despite their name, black bears can be chocolate brown, cinnamon, grey, white or even bluish in colour. The blue colour morph are known as ‘glacier bears’ in Alaska whereas the white black bears of the Pacific North West are known as ‘spirit bears’

3. Spirit bears are not albinos. Their eyes are not pink. They are not closely related to the much larger polar bear that evolved from brown bears. Spirit seemed to have evolved from an isolated population of black bears that inherited the gene for white fur colour.

4. Famous black bears include Winnipeg of London Zoo who inspired Winnie the Pooh, and Smokey - a bear cub who was the mascot for the United States Forest Service.

5. In 2004 at Baker Lake Washington, a black bear drank 36 cans of beer after raiding a camper’s cooler. In the morning he was a bear with a sore head!

6. The Busbys worn by the Queens Foot Guard are made from black bear fur.

7. Though they attack humans less often than brown bears, black bear attacks on humans seem to be predatory rather than defensive. Whereas many brown bears will leave a dead human untouched, a black bear will eat them.

8. Black bears can kill and eat animals as large as cows, but meat only makes up around 15% of their diet. The rest is fruit, roots, grasses, and other vegetable matter, as well as fungi and honey.

9. There are 16 sub-species of the black bear.

10. A young black bear with mange was recently mistaken for a sasquatch. However, sasquatches walk erect habitually, and do not move about on all fours like a bear. Also the sasquatch has broad, well-defined shoulders that all bears lack.