Kodiak Bear
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Kodiak Bear is the largest of all the brown bears of the Alaskan coast and islands,
which weight up to 680 kilogram. Also called Big Brown (because of the size) these giants
fatten on everything from mountain blueberies to washed-up whale carcasses, but their particular prey is the big
Pacific salmon that come up the coastal rivers each summer to spawn.
Seeing a Kodiak bear rearing its monstrous bulk in the air to spot a likely
fishing hole, one finds it hard to realize that it was born blind and helpless, an
infant the size of a rat and weighing less than a pound
Kodiak Bear (Ursus arctos middendorffi) is the largest terrestrial
carnivore. It is a variety of brown bear living Alaska.
It draws its name from the island Kodiak, one of the islands of the gulf of Alaska,
but one also finds some on the peninsula and the close islands, like Afognak and
Shuyak. The size of the large males exceeds 3 m and their weight can reach a ton.
As in all the brown bears, the color is very variable from one individual to another.
Some are greyish, others very dark, others of brown clearly drawing on the yellow.
Like the polar bear, the poverty of the vegetation in the sorry areas where
it saw makes it primarily carnivorous. It is a placid and solitary animal whose
principal source of food seems to be consisted salmons that it sins in the rivers
and the brooks. On the Kodiak island, it eats many plants and salmon.
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Kodiak
By the time winter comes to the southern Alaskan range of the Kodiak bears they have fattened
themselves suficiently in the preceding months to be able to fast until spring
in a cave or den. Kodiaks, like all other bears, do not
actually hibernate but sleep most of the winter. Their body temperature does not undergo
dramatic drop, nor is their metabolism significantly reduced - cnhanges typical in ture
hibernators such a ground squirrels and most North American bats. But Kodiak and most other bears remain
completely inactive until spring.
During their long sleep a remarkable adaptation called the anal plug prevent them
from fouling themselves or their den. This plug is thought to be an accumulated residue
of vegetable matter that blocks the intestines until it is expelled in the spring.
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