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Grizzly Bear is an animal to be treated with respect. Though it will generally avoind
humans, a female bear, or sow, can charge suddenly if her cubs are threatened,
and the animal has even been known to outrun a horse for short distances.
Grizzly Bear (Ursus arctos horribilis), sometimes called the Silvertip Bear, is a subspecies of the brown bear
living in North America.
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Grizzly Bear habitat
They roaming the North American continent
for the past million years, has managed to outlive both the saber-toothed tiger and the mastodon.
As major targets of human hunters, however, the tens of thousands of grizzlies that once inhabited
the Great Plains and the Rockies and Sierras of the American West have been reduced to a fraction of their
former numbers. Today most grizzlies live in Alaska and Canada. Probably fewer than a thousand remain in the 48
contiguous states, and those bears are found almost exclusively in some 10 million acres of Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.
Grizzly Bear Characteristic
The term "grizzly" addresses in addition, Grizzlies on the white-grey speckled upper skin,
which particularly animals in the Rocky Mountains exhibit, from yellow-brown to dark-brown or nearly black colored.
The color depends particularly on the habitat, in the special one on the food and on the climate.
The size decreases generally from the north to the south, while they can weigh in the north up to 680 kilograms,
and in the south from 80 to 200 kilograms. The male is on average 1.8 times as heavy as the female.
Despite its massive figure he can run with a speed of over 60 km/h.
The legs before and the shoulders of the grizzly are particularly massive and powerful and allow him to dig.
It climbs with the trees to unearth honey, swims easily.It uses its claws to fight, seek its food and to mark its territory on the trunk of the trees. Its sense of smell is well developed.
The grizzly has 30 years an average life expectancy.
The grizzly accumulates 200 kg of grease in order to cross the winter
in a state of lethargy which is not however a real hibernation.
The grizzly is omnivorous, eating anything fromn ants to beached whales.
They also feed on dead game and fish. On rare occasions they kill elk and dig out ground
squirrels and foxes.
90% of its diet are vegetable. It is a solitary animal which meets however
along the torrents and rivers for the period when the salmons go up the current.
Mother and cubs
Grizzlies usually mate sometime between May and Juy. Males are thought to find females by smell,
relying on olfactory clues like those left on rubbing post. They often travel eagerly at this time of year,
sniffing the ground and the breeze for scent of a potential mate. Sometimes they get so engrossed
in their search that they neglect to eat for hours at a strecth.
The females do not become pregnant immediately because bears have developed a procedure
called delayed implantation, which mean that the fertilized egg floats in the female's womb
for several months. If she is well fed, it will settle into the uterine wall and
develop while she is hibernating. If the female fails to get enough to eat during the summer, the egg
will die.
The cubs are born in midwinter and the number depends in part on the local food supply.
Twins are usually most common. At birth, the grizzly is blind and toothless and weights about 500 grams.
They are so small that newborn would easily fit into cupped hands. But they grow fast and are robust
and playful by the time warm weather arrives.
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Persisting in their
attempt to drive off the grizzly, the wolves circle beyond reach of the
bear's lethal claws. Where their ranges overlap, grizzlies and wolves can coexist
an generally peaceful terms. One naturalist observed a grizzly and a wolf
feeding side by side on a caribou carcass.
But a grizzly that decides to take over a wolf
kill is almost always successful. In this instance the grizzly survived wolfes attack, prevails, and the wolves hury off to look
for an easier meal.
The grizzly's does not have enemy. Only natural enemy of grizzly is man.
