Bears Living Their Best Lives

Humans have been keeping bears in zoos, menageries, and dens for thousands of years.  Maybe because our history with the animals is so long, we tend to think that we know all that there is to know about them.  We certainly know how to build enclosures that are capable of keeping bears in.  We know how to provide diets that keep them alive.  We (vaguely) know how to breed them.  Beyond that, we saw little need to go for quite some time.

We're starting to see the realization among zoos that bears are like elephants and great apes: large, intelligent, behaviorally complex animals that need a habitat and a care regime that satisfies their many needs.  Every bear is an individual with its own personality and its own story, and the care may need to be adjusted to reflect that.  Bears require a lot of space and a lot of keeper time in order to provide the enrichment and training that they need to be kept mentally stimulated.  One consequence of this may be that zoos aren't able to house as many bears as they previously were able to, when a small, concrete cage and an adjacent den was considered adequate to meet their needs.

Bears require a lot in order to really be kept healthy and happy (you might even say that they need more than the... bare necessities.  I'll see myself out).  Based on my experiences working with three species, I can say without doubt - bears are worth it.

An Animal That Looks Like A Man

A keeper that I knew once said of the rescued black bears that she cared for, "Sometimes they remind me of people wearing bear costumes who are supposed to act like animals, but keep forgetting."  Maybe she was inspired to make that meme. Who knows, maybe she was the inspiration behind it?

There is something undeniably human about bears, and we as a species have acknowledged it for centuries.  You can read legends about bears from places as different as western Europe, the Canadian subarctic, and the foothills of the Andes and find a lot of stories which are nearly identical.  A classic version, shared among several peoples, tells of a bear who abducted a human woman to be his wife.  She bore him sons who were human but who inherited magic powers from their father.

Something I've noticed over the years is that in many parts of the world where you find bears, you don't find apes or large primates.  None in North America, Europe, or northern Asia.  South America has monkeys aplenty, but not so many where the Andean bears roam, and there are no great apes, gibbons, baboons, or macaques in South America anyway.  Only when you get into southern Asia do bears and big primates really start to overlap.  

Why does this matter?  It means that in many parts of the world, the bear is the animal that our ancestors would have identified as the most human-like creature that they shared their landscape with.  Think about it.  Bears and humans are roughly similar sizes.  Humans walk on their two legs - bears are one of the few large mammals that can also do that.  Early humans sheltered in caves.  So did bears.  We don't have tails.  Neither do they.  We tend to eat the same stuff, we lived in the same places, we both can manipulate objects with our hands/front paws.  Skinned of its pelt, a dead bear looks quite a bit like a person.  If you never saw a chimp or a gorilla, you might very well believe that a bear was our closest relative.

I think that really sums up our affinity for bears so much.  There are few other animals which occupy such a huge role in our minds, in which they can be seen as both fearsome and dangerous (bear attacks are a constant source of drama in outdoor adventure movies) yet still so lovable (Teddy Bears, Care Bears, Berenstain Bears, Paddington, Corduroy, etc).  It explains to me that, when humans first started keeping wild animals in zoos - not for food, or for companionship, but just because they wanted to be close to an animal - they started with bears.  It also explains to me why, when we look for an endangered species to rally around in the name of saving the earth, whether its as the mascot of the World Wildlife Fund or the symbol of global climate change, we turned to bears.

Problematic Pandas

Koalas (which, not to mess with this month's theme, are not bears) are possibly one of the most popular animals found in any zoo in the world.  This despite the fact that relatively few zoos are capable of exhibiting them.  There may be a single other species which surpasses them in terms of popularity as a zoo animal, one that manages to be extremely popular and enormously recognizable, while at the same time being very rare.  That, of course, is the giant panda.

The giant panda's position in the bear family has only recently been solidified.  When I was younger, my teachers in school taught us that it was a giant, tailless raccoon, and I still sometimes encounter visitors who are convinced that it's not really a bear.  Genetics has confirmed for us, however, that that is what it is, being closer to the bears than not only to the raccoons, but to that "other" panda, the red panda, which really belongs off in a family all by itself.  The scientific debates only raged for a century or so, because the giant panda was unknown to western science until the 1800's, and for the first few decades after that it remained a relatively obscure, unknowable animal.  Once it first made the zoo scene, however, it exploded into superstardom.

What makes the giant panda so damn lovable to so many people?  Desmond Morris of the Zoological Society of London thought that, in terms of appearance, pandas just push all the right buttons for us.  They look like babies with flat, round faces and small noses; though their eyes aren't especially big, the black markings around them make the eyes look bigger and sweeter.  They are plump and clumsy, which is endearing.  As (mostly) vegetarians, they are nonthreatening (though looks can be deceiving - pandas can be quite aggressive, both with each other and with keepers).  Also, rarity boosts popularity.  "They're like super babies," he admitted.

After a few brief appearances from the 1930's on, pandas were exhibited consistently in the US following the arrival of Hsing Hsing and Ling Ling at the National Zoo, compliments of Richard Nixon's panda diplomacy.  For years those were the only pandas in the US, though a few more joined in.  At the peak, there were four zoos, now three.  Just three zoos out of the 200+ accredited zoos in the US.  There are more facilities with orcas in the US than that.

Unlike koalas, pandas aren't actually too, too hard to keep.  Bamboo isn't eucalyptus and can be grown in a wide variety of climates.  The challenge of feeding pandas isn't the availability of bamboo, it's the hassle of getting enough to feed the (wasteful) bears, which, to be fair, are also perfectly capable of eating other foods, unlike koalas.  Whereas koalas can be finicky about temperature, pandas are a fair bit tougher, and enjoy cold weather.  Given air conditioned dens to retreat into, they can put up with most summer weather as well, within reason.  Breeding pandas, once considered nearly impossible, is starting to become more routine.  With a few more pandas, I have no doubt that a sustainable zoo population could be created in the US... if it weren't for one teeny detail.

The problem with pandas certainly isn't one of demand.  It's supply.  After the deaths of Hsing Hsing and Ling Ling, all pandas in the US are property of the Chinese government, which charges a cool million bucks or so a year for the privilege of the loan.  That puts pandas out of the means of many zoos.  Even if a zoo could afford it, it raises the question of whether that money might be better spent on other conservation priorities.  Not for nothing, but sloth bears and Andean bears could probably use a million dollars worth of conservation support per bear each year.  Neither of those species, however, has the draw of pandas.  Go to the National Zoo on a busy day (now that they are reopening) and walk in front of the pandas, sloth bears, and Andean bears.  See where the crowds are.

I've seen pandas in four US zoos, and who knows, maybe someday I'll see them in more.  It always makes me happy to see visitors get excited about an animal, and I know that the zoos that display the species can use the funds that pandas bring in (after they pay their rent, of course) to do other big projects.  I just sometimes wish that visitors could see past the pandas and let some of that superstardom and worship rub off on some of the other species. 

Species Fact Profile: Koala (Phascolarctus cinereus)

                                                                        Koala

Phascolarctus cinereus (Goldfuss, 1817)

Range: Eastern and Southern Australia

Habitat: Temperate and Tropical Open Forest, Woodland

Diet: Eucalyptus Leaves

Social Grouping: Primarily solitary, but sometimes form small groups. 

Reproduction:  Breed spring and early summer.  Females usually breed alternating years, determined by availability of food.  Gestation is 33-35 days.  Single joey (sometimes twins) is 0.5 grams at birth, very poorly developed.  The joey emerges from the pouch at 6-7 months, weaned at one year.  Sexually mature at 3-4 years old.   

Lifespan: 13-18 Years

Conservation Status: IUCN Vulnerable

• Body length 60-85 centimeters, weight 4-15 kilograms.  Males are up to 50% larger than females.  Males and females can also be differentiated by their more curved noses and chest glands (visible as hairless patches).  Stocky body with powerful limbs, vestigial tail
• Fur is thicker and longer and the back, shorter on the belly.  The ears are thickly furred inside and out.  The belly is white, as is the rump, while the fur on the back is a gray or brown.  The fur is very insulating and resistant to wind and rain.
• The forepaws (“hands”) have two opposable digits to help grasp small branches.  The second and third digits of the hind-paws are fused and serve as a grooming claw.  Paws have friction ridges to assist with climbing.  A cartilaginous pad at the base of the spine keeps the animal comfortable while resting in the trees.
• Eucalyptus are of low nutritional value and high in toxicity.  Several adaptations to the diet, including specialized teeth for shredding the leaves, cheek pouches for storage,  and the production of a chemical which breaks down the toxins of eucalyptus in the liver.  Very low metabolic rate, half that of a typical mammal
• Home ranges are small and overlap heavily, but do not interact much.  Males may become territorial and dominate others, marking their territory by scent marking with their chest glands, making loud, low-frequency bellows.  Males may fight, by try to avoid it since they don’t have surplus energy
• Predators include dingoes and large pythons, while large birds of prey may take the young.  Sometimes killed by falls from trees, though often are able to recover.  Slowness leaves them vulnerable to bushfires.  Ultimate cause of death for many koalas is starvation caused by the wearing down of their teeth, which usually begins at about 6 years of age.
• Common name comes from the Aboriginal Dharug word gula meaning “no water,” which reflected the belief that the animals did not have to drink, ever.  The genus name comes from the Greek “Phaskolos arktos” for “pouch bear” and the Latin “cinereus” for “ash-colored”
• Historically hunted for their fur, leading to local extirpation.  Hunting no longer is practices, but now numbers have rebounded to the degree that population control is needed in some areas (outcry against culling, instead translocation and sterilization).  Sanctuaries for the species have been established across its range
• Primary threat it habitat loss and fragmentation.  Range has shrunk by 50%.  Koalas were the very publicized face of the 2020 bushfire crisis in Australia
• Major symbol of symbol of Australia and key component of the ecotourism industry there.  Source of popularity its teddy-bear like appearance.  Depicted in cartoons (Kwicky Koala, Noozies), mascot of sports teams, featured on coinage.  Sometimes sent on loan to foreign zoos similar to the “panda diplomacy” employed by China
• Australian Aborigines depicted the koala in Dreamtime stories, depicted in rock art.  Historically hunted it for food.  Modern Australian folklore tells of the “drop bear,” a mythologized bloodthirsty koala that drops on people from above

                    

Zookeeper's Journal:  It's hard to believe, but there was a time when no one really liked koalas.  The first European naturalists to see them found them grotesque and stupid; settlers were afraid of them and thought they might be dangerous.  I wonder what they would think of them now, when the koala is one of the most beloved species on the planet and an internationally recognizable symbol of Australia?  Today, the koala is one of the most famous “zoo animals” in the world… even if few zoos actually have one. Like most American zoo lovers, my first encounter with a koala was at the San Diego Zoo.  For a long time it was the only zoo in the world to have the species outside of Australia.  Koalas only appeared in US zoos starting int he 1920s, with their ability to thrive being directly connected to the ability of a zoo to have a good year-round supply of fresh eucalyptus.  Not surprisingly, they are mostly found in zoos in the warmer parts of the country, with San Diego still having the majority of them.  Apart from the fussy diet, koalas don't ask for much as far as exhibit animals go.  They just... sleep on a perch, which is pretty much what they do in the wild.

Zoo Joke: The Second Amendment

In honor of Earth Day earlier this week... I'm recycling a joke:

A police detective grows suspicious over a large number of gun shipments in his city, all of which seem to be funneling towards - of all places - the local zoo.  Obtaining a search warrant, he leads a raid on the zoo.  When he does, he finds hundreds of firearms of all kinds - handguns, rifles, machine guns, even a bazooka or two.  Most surprisingly, none of these weapons are being handled by the human staff of the zoo - they're all being carried around by the zoo's bears.

Well, the police report their findings to the district attorney and charges are filed.  Appeals are filed in return, opposing the confiscation of the weapons from the zoo.  The case earns national attention; it is debated in the media and in Congress and eventually makes it all the way to the United States Supreme Court .  After hearing testimony, the nine justices of the court begin their deliberations.  Shortly afterwards, they return with a decision.

"We find, unanimously, in favor of the zoo animals, whose rights were infringed upon when their guns were taken away," announced the Chief Justice to a packed courtroom.

Stunned, one of the opposing attorneys asked how this could possibly be the Court's decision.

"Well, we didn't agree at first, so we went down to the Archives to read the original copy of the Constitution itself for clarification," the Chief Justice explained.  "And wouldn't you know it, everyone's been misreading the Second Amendment for years, getting it backwards.  It actually says that we have the right to arm bears!"

The Arctic Ambassador

Animals are rarely allowed to stand only for themselves.  We have a tendency as a society to affix meanings to them and to make them symbols.  Show anyone, anywhere in the world a bald eagle and they will probably think of the United States.  Doves symbolize peace, while many people associate snakes with the devil or evil.  These days, as soon as you mention polar bears or show people a picture of one, that turns peoples' thoughts to climate change.

Frequently Asked Questions about polar bears, from Polar Bears International

Polar bears are the archetypal animal of global warming.  We hear about how the polar ice caps are melting and how polar bears are starving to death or going out to sea and drowning because they can't find any sea ice, only open water.  Climate change deniers claim it's all bull, that there are more polar bears now then there used to be, and that even if the arctic is warming, polar bears will adapt.  And if they don't adapt, well, that's just natural selection, or something like that.

The reality is that the arctic is warming twice and fast as the rest of the world on average and that polar bears are running out of habitat and hunting grounds.  It's hard to say how many bears there are now compared to how many there once were, because people have only recently actually cared enough to bother counting, and the arctic is not the easiest place to track and survey solitary, wide-ranging animals.   Estimates from decades ago suggested a count of bears that was about a third of what the current estimate is, but it's hard to say just how accurate those early estimates were.

Sometimes, it seems like we put too much weight on the shoulders of polar bears, expecting them to be flagship species for global climate change.  It's easy in one way because they are a beloved species that virtually every on earth can recognize.  At the same time, they live in a corner of the world that is so remote that, as far as many people are concerned, might as well be the dark side of the moon.  The bitter pill is that, if polar bears went extinct, most of us might not really notice.  I would be very sad - the world would be a much sadder, less exciting place without polar bears - but the world would continue to spin on its axis, like it has following the extinction of many other species.

What so many people aren't grasping is that global climate change is not an arctic problem - it's a GLOBAL problem.  It's great to rally people around the polar bear, but there are a lot of species and ecosystems that are in trouble, many of which are much closer to home and which, not to be selfish, are going to have a much bigger direct impact on us than the polar bear.  Perhaps if we focus more on those - the loss of coral reefs due to ocean warming and acidification, which can have serious impacts on fisheries and tourism, or the increasing droughts and forest fires in many parts of the world - we can get more people on board with making an environmental difference. 

In saving the rest of the world, we save the polar bear.

The Hotel Polar

 "'Relax' said the nightman, 'We are programmed to receive.

You can check out any time you like - but you can never leave.'"

- Hotel California, The Eagles

I've spent a few nights sleeping over at zoos.  I've even lived in one briefly (which turns out to be a great way to make sure that you never have a day off.  Ever).  Some zoos offer sleepover programs.  But imagine a zoo, inside a hotel?

It's not the hardest thing for me to imagine.  When I was in Belize years ago, I'd heard of a hotel not far from where I was staying that kept a small zoo, so I snuck myself in for a peak.  There were birds in cages, a spider monkey tethered to a tree, and a jaguar in what, I had to admit, was a roomier enclosure than I expected to find.  Still, something just felt off about the whole thing to me.

That was years before I learned about opening of China's polar bear hotel, Harbin Polarland.

Icy reception for hotel with guest polar bears

Here, guests' rooms in the multistory structure face a polar bear enclosure.  I haven't been to able to see much of it, so I really don't have much of an understanding of the size, complexity, or layout of the enclosure.  From what I understand, the hotel is a new component of an existing polar amusement park, and are currently kept completely indoors on artificial "ice" with artificial lighting.  I've read (but have not verified) that there is no off-exhibit area, leaving the bears constantly on view.  Granted, the source that I have for some of these facts is an organization that is opposed to bears under human management period, so there is some bias there, but being biased doesn't necessarily mean being wrong.  To me, it seems like a ripe environment for stereotypic behavior and bored, stressed bears.

Ironically, this is the second polar bear hotel that I'd heard about recently.  The other was the Belgian zoo Pairi Daiza, in which visitors can stay in a variety of rooms with views into the habitats of polar bears, walruses, and other animals.  The reaction here from the public has been much more positive (although, to be honest, it doesn't seem like Polarland is suffering too much from any backlash - the hotel has been fully booked since it opened).  What's the difference?

As I see it, there's a difference between putting a hotel in a zoo and putting a zoo in a hotel.  In Pairi Daiza, animals aren't squished into a hotel setting; visitors are given rooms adjacent to the animal's enclosure - an enclosure which is large, outdoors, naturalistic, and enriching.  Animals have the opportunity to remove themselves from public view and seek privacy.  The needs of the bears are placed before those of the public.  If need be, access to the hotel room with the bears can be closed to give the animals space and quiet.

The polar bears, walruses, and other animals don't have to be seen if they don't want to.  To me, that means that when they do make a guest appearance, it'll be that much more special - because they want to be seen.

You Can Now Stay In A Hotel Overlooking Polar Bears

The "Bearness" of the Polar Bear

Earlier, I talked about the two native bears to the United States - the brown bear and the American black bear - and how many zoos took in orphaned or nuisance bear cubs.   There is, of course, a third bear native to the US, assuming that you remember to count Alaska.  That is the polar bear - though plenty of people seem to forget that it's a bear.  Certainly I've come across many zookeepers, curators, and directors who can't seem to get that into their heads.

The polar bear is a legal and logistical challenge for many zoos, because the US Government doesn't treat them like other bears - it classifies them as marine mammals, which makes them subject to a whole host of other laws and regulations, from acquisition policy to transport to water quality.  It's probably part of the reason that you don't see polar bears in roadside zoos like you do brown and black bears - way too much trouble, too much paperwork, and too much expense.  The costs of the pool and water filtration systems alone can be exhausting to deal with.

Polar bears are closely associated with the water.  Even their scientific name translates to "Sea Bear" or "Maritime Bear."  As a result, most polar bear exhibits are built as people imagine the arctic - the main feature is a pool, usually with underwater viewing these days, while the land area is meant to look like ice.  Ice isn't a practical building material, so what it really often ends up being is rock or concrete, sometimes painted white to resemble glaciers, all framing the pool.  I suppose if  you took a quick photograph of a polar bear in the wild and compared it to a zoo exhibit, they might look close enough - a harsh, seemingly barren landscape, and then the water.  Just because that's what it looks like, though, doesn't mean that it's what it should be.

I'd never really thought about polar bear exhibits much until I read Colin Tudge's Last Animals At The Zoo.  In it, he summed up the problem with polar bears succinctly by stating that they are NOT furry seals.  They are bears.  They do, as Else Poulsen would say, bear things.  Tudge described how a polar bear at one European zoo was allowed into the brown bear exhibit.  It romped in the grass. It dug in the dirt.  It even (with a little difficulty) climbed a tree.  

We typically don't think of a species as "new," but evolutionary speaking, polar bears really are "new" animals.  They evolved quite recently from a population of brown bears that were cut off by an ice age and adapted to life in the frozen north.  They still are very  much bears though, and are closely enough related to brown bears that they can interbreed easily and produce fertile young.  Those brown bear genes aren't buried too deeply beneath a white pelt and blubber.  In the wild, polar bears at the southern end of their range may wander through fields and forests, snacking on berries when the ice packs and seals aren't available.  That's their home just as much as the ice fields are.

The best polar bear exhibits that I've seen, such as Detroit Zoo and Columbus Zoo, are the ones that acknowledge the "bearness" of polar bears, and give them opportunities to do bear things.  The arctic may be seemingly barren and desolate in many places, but in the wild polar bears roam miles and miles of it.  If they only have an acre or so in a zoo, that space needs to be much more enriching and variable, even if it doesn't match our concept of what a "natural" arctic habitat looks like.  There needs to be a pool, of course.  Swimming is a bear thing - it's definitely a  polar bear thing.  But that's not all that they are, and their habitat should reflect that.  

They're bears, after all - not furry seals.

Sporcle Quiz: Tropical Bears

In zoos, so much of the attention is always paid to our two native bears species, the brown and the American black, as well as the two crowd pleasers, the polar bear and the giant panda.  Often overlooked are the four forgotten tropical bears of South Asia and South America.  How much do you know about these equally amazing but less-famous bears?

Sporcle Quiz - Tropical Bears 

The Basket Case Bears

Virtually none of the lions that you see in an American zoo have ever seen Africa; ditto for tigers and Asia, or jaguars and South America.  The same could be said for almost all of the other large carnivores.  The sloth bears, sun bears, Andean bears, and polar bears in our zoos all most likely started their lives in zoos.  There are a few exceptions, though – and the exceptions that prove the rule are the brown bears and (especially) American black bears.  If you see one of those bears, especially in an AZA-accredited zoo, then it’s most likely that their story leads back to the wild.  

These are the bears that likely got themselves into trouble somehow.  Maybe they were pulling the Yogi Bear routine and helping themselves to one too many picnic baskets (or breaking into too many cars, bird feeders, etc) and efforts to relocate or reeducate them just weren’t working.  Maybe they were found as orphans and were rescued at an age where they were just too young to be released.  Or, maybe it was their mother who was the problem bear and they learned their bad habits from her (not that the father bears can’t also be troublemakers – it’s just that, since they take no part in rearing the cubs, they aren’t in a position to pass along any bad habits).  Either way, a situation will arise where, for these bears, there are two options left.  There’s life in a zoo… or death.

Bears are smart, adaptable creatures, and given the right environment and the right care, even an adult wild-born bear can settle in pretty comfortably to life in a zoo setting.  They can still forage, climb, swim, dig, and do most of the other bear activities.  I’d say “most” because there is one thing that these bears should not be doing – and that’s breeding.  There is a pretty steady supply of bears every year that need to be re-homed, and only so many spaces in facilities that are equipped to care for them.  The solution, then, is to not create any more brown bears or American black bears that could take space and resources away from potential future rescues (it's the same reason zoo's don't usually breed other native animals, such as bald eagles and pumas).  For those bears, having a space available in a zoo or sanctuary could very well be the difference between life and death.

I’ve worked with some of these “basket case bears” and met others up close and personal, and I’ve loved them all.  They work well in zoo exhibits of native wildlife, and, through their personal stories, can be great messengers about how to successfully live alongside large wild animals like bears.  At Zoo Naples and Turtle Back Zoo, for example, the exhibits are modeled around people’s homes, and it’s like you’re looking out into your yard and seeing bears there.  Visitors can learn about how to coexist with bears in a way that’s safe for everyone.  That’s a wonderful teaching opportunity for people.

The only challenge is when it comes to the other bears – the endangered bears that aren’t from the United States.  Sloth bears and Andean bears are endangered species, and ideally zoo-based breeding programs would help maintain a sustainable population of the species for the future.  The limiting factor, however, is space – bears are big animals that need a lot of resources, and there just aren’t that many spaces available in zoos.  The “foreign” bears tend to lose out to the local guys.  It’s a tough decision – do you devote your resources to helping to support an endangered species that’s in need of conservation?  Or do you give it to a common species with a good educational message, and whereby in doing so you might be saving the life of an individual animal?

Ideally, we’d have the space and resources to do both, but conservation has never been a field that’s been overloaded with resources… and that leads to some tough questions and delicate balancing acts.

Zoo History: Hotfoot Teddy Becomes Smokey Bear

When World War II broke out, an enormous swath of able-bodied American men were called to duty in Europe, Africa, and Asia.  Their departure left a drain in many professions, but few caused authorities greater concern than firefighters.  After the Japanese initiated a program of trying to incite forest fires in California through firebombing, the US Forest Service became very concerned.  While there was only so much that could be done to limit the actions of an enemy power, the Forest Service decided that it needed to put more focus on educating the public about the danger of wildfire, and so a public relations campaign was begun.

The first mascot on the campaign was the star of Disney's animated movie Bambi, but Walt Disney only loaned the rights to the Forest Service for a year.  In 1944, the decision was made to switch the mascot from a deer to a bear.  The cartoon bear was named "Smokey" after "Smokey" Joe Martin, a hero New York City fireman.  For the first several years, "Smokey" existed as a cartoon character only.

That changed in 1950, when firefighters scouring the remains of a New Mexican wildfire found a tiny American black bear cub.  The five-pound cub had scurried up a tree to avoid the worst of the fire, but still suffered from burns on his paws and legs, earning him the nickname "Hotfoot Teddy" among his rescuers.   Later, he was renamed "Smokey" after the cartoon icon. 

Smokey became a local celebrity, and his fame soon spread all the way to Washington DC.  The Forest Service decided that he was a perfect mascot for the forest fire campaign, and he was sent to the National Zoo.  Smokey flew cross country, spending the night at the St. Louis Zoo while his plane was refueled, and was greeted at his new home by a crowd of hundreds.  Boys Scouts and Girl Scouts made up a sizable part of the crowd that welcomed him to what would become his home for the next 26 years.

Mascots live forever, but real bears do not, so there was a desire to have an heir to the throne (or, in this case, hat and shovel) to carry Smokey's legacy.  He was paired with a female black bear named "Goldie."  When the pair showed no interest in mating, the zoo introduced another fire-orphaned cub to the group, dubbed him "Little Smokey," and claimed that he was Smokey's adopted son.  Sure enough, Smokey "retired" from public life in 1975, and his "son" took on the mantle.  The original Smokey died the next year, November 9, 1976.  His body was returned to New Mexico and buried in Smokey Bear Historical Park, which now serves as a wildfire education facility.

In his prime, the real-life Smokey received an average of 2,000 pieces of fan mail a day.  In 1964, the US Postal Service gave him his own ZIP code (20252) to accommodate the influx of mail.  Millions of visitors can to see him - in these pre-panda days, he was probably the biggest star the National Zoo and the most famous bear in the country.  Today, Smokey Bear remains one of the most recognizable marketing campaigns in the country.  Virtually everyone knows his "Only YOU Can Prevent Forest Fires" slogan.  Not as many of those people know that the legend started with Bambi and took off on the singed little-paws of a cub named "Hotfoot Teddy."

The Birds and the Bees and the Bears

There are few events in the zoo world that attract more excitement from the public than the birth of a giant panda.  The panda is perhaps the most famous endangered species in the world and is found in very few zoos - until relatively recently breeding in western zoos was almost unheard of, despite herculean efforts to make it happen.  When a successful breeding does occur, one of the aspects that the public finds the most fascinating is the size-discrepancy between the mother and the cub.  "Giant" pandas might not really be very "giant" as far as bears go, but compared to their cubs, they look like leviathans.  A newborn panda, the cliche comparison goes, is only as big as a stick of butter.

Of course, there's nothing unusual about that size compared to the other bears - all of them give birth to similarly tiny, helpless babies that bear (pun unintended) almost no resemblance to the animals that they will grow into.  In the temperate and polar regions, bears tend to give birth during the time of year when they are sequestered in their dens, not really hibernating but certainly inactive.  The cubs are born in darkness (which is just as well, since they're blind at this stage anyway) and nurse from the mother, drinking up the fat stores that she has built up in the months before going into her den.  At this very young stage the cubs are completely helpless, and the mother knows it.  If she feels threatened by another animal (including a human) and has reason to believe that the cubs won't survive, she may cut her losses and kill them herself, or at least abandon them.  

By the time the mother bear emerges in the spring, ravenous and ready to eat, the cubs look like what we'd expect them to look like - more like Teddy bears than rodents.

Mother bears are well known for being very protective of their cubs, and it certainly is true that the youngsters need a lot of protection.  Predators that would flee at the approach of an adult bear wouldn't turn down the opportunity to prey on an unprotected small cub.  One of the greatest dangers to a cub is a male bear.  A male bear in the wild will kill cubs that he encounters, seeking to extinguish the genetic progeny of a rival and free up the female so that he can breed her.  A male bear may be a great father in the sense that he is able to sire many young... but he tends to be a lousy daddy.  As far as humans are concerned, the overwhelming cuteness of cubs can lead people to forget that the cubs are wild animals - with wild mothers - and try to play with them if they find them in the woods, seemingly on their own... which can turn south very fast when mom suddenly appears. 

I've only ever once handled bear cubs.  It was in a remote forested area, where I was assisting a biologist I was friends with in doing some den work on wild black bears before they awoke in the spring.  After weighing and measuring the little furballs, I snuck in a few seconds of snuggling with them... just to keep them warm, of course.  It was quite a brisk day.  All of this was possibly only because mom had a dart in her butt and was snoring deeply ten feet away, where my biologist friend was busy taking samples.

Book Review: Smiling Bears

"You cannot humanize a bear, and you cannot 'de-bearize' a bear.  Give bears what they need to carry on their bear lives, and they will, even if what it means to be a bear has lain buried for years."

Whenever zookeeper Else Poulsen met a bear for the first time, she always asked it two things - "Who are you?  And what can I do for you?"  Those two questions defined her relationship with every bear that she ever worked with.  The first sought to understand the life of the bear as an individual, to know what made its story unique compared to all of the other bears that she worked with over her life.  The second question took the answer to the first, and then helped her decide how to best give that bear what it needed for a happy, healthy, fulfilling life under her care.  Key to both was her understanding that bears were all individuals, and that no two were the same.

Poulsen, who passed away a few years ago, recounts her experiences working with a variety of ursids in her memoir, Smiling Bears: A Zookeeper Explores the Behavior and Emotional Life of Bears.  Each chapter is focused around her relationship with an individual bear that she worked with at different zoos throughout her career and how she tried to understand them to meet their needs.  The title draws from her unequivocal belief that bears, when happy and content, do really smile.  A lot of the keepers that I worked with early in my career would dismiss this as anthropomorphic hogwash.  Maybe they just never gave their bears sufficient cause to smile.

The bears that Poulsen cared for all came into her life in different ways.  Some were born at other zoos and transferred to ones where she worked.  Some were non-releasable wild bears who, after bad behavior on the campgrounds, were faced with the options of the zoo or the lethal injection.  And some were confiscations.  The bear which Poulsen tells the most moving story about (one that she shared with me earlier on this blog) is of Barle the polar bear, one of the famous Suarez Seven who were confiscated from an abusive Mexican circus.  Barle's story is one of rehabilitation and redemption, being taken from what must be one of the least appropriate, most unnatural environments a polar bear could find itself in and being given a chance to do.... well, bear things.  Before she died, Barle got to swim, forage, socialize with other bears, and even give birth.  Even after her rescue, her story could have been a much sadder one - a bear afflicted with the ursine-equivalent of PTSD, living in neurotic fear of her well-meaning new keepers - if it hadn't been for the loving, expert care that she received.

Bears are tough animals and tend to do "okay" in even the most mediocre of zoo habitats, if by "okay" you mean they eat, stay reasonably healthy, and breed.  Their toughness makes them seem aloof and unapproachable.  Poulson's book shows us two sides of bears.  There is the animal that is sensitive, intelligent, and delicate, shaped by the care that it receives from its keepers.  There is also a strong inner bear which, given the chance, will engage in natural behaviors and do its best to... well, be a bear.  Poulson bridges the gap between the two, describing how even the most "damaged" of bears (her epilogue deals with bears rescued from the absolute hellscape of bile farms) can, with the right care, reclaim their lives and be bears ago, "to do bear stuff" as she puts it.  And a bear that gets to do "bear stuff" will be, almost inevitably, a smiling bear.

Smiling Bear: A Zookeeper Explores the Behavior and Emotional Life of Bears at Amazon.com

Bowling with Bears

Bears are almost synonymous with strength.  They're hulking masses of muscle, with the larger species capable of weighing in at nearly 2,000 pounds.  That they manage to be super strong and dangerous while also looking snuggly is one of nature's great ironies.

My lesson on how strong bears really are came from a young female that we'd just received at a past zoo where I worked.  She was sent as a future mate for our older resident male, but was still a little on the young side and quite small, so we weren't trying to rush the introduction too quickly.  That meant that she was housed alone at the moment, and as such I suspect she was quite bored.  I tried to compensate by giving her lots of enrichment.

I hadn't been at that zoo for much longer than she had, and was still figuring a lot of things out, being very new to the bear line.  I quickly ran through all of the enrichment that I could think of for her and was worried that I was running out of ideas.  One day, I was covering for our big cat keeper when I happened to glance through their enrichment closet.  There were plenty of toys in there that I hadn't tried on our young bear, so I decided to try some out.  The first one I took was a bowling ball.

I thoroughly cleaned it, removing any trace of cat (to prevent any disease transmission - I wasn't sure how much of a risk it would be, but wanted to be thorough).  Then, I drizzled some honey over it, tossed a few raisins and nuts in the finger holes, and placed it in her enclosure.

These are enrichment objects (from another zoo) after lions have finished playing with them.  A big polar bear or grizzly bear can weigh more that twice as much as a full-grown lion, so feel free to use your imagination for what those toys can look like.

At first, it worked like a charm.  She sniffed it closely, then licked off the honey.  She discovered by rolling it around, she could dislodge the raisins and the nuts.  Then, once those were eaten, she continued to roll it around still.  I was pretty happy with it... until she stood up on her back legs and picked the ball up.  Then, to my disbelief, she shuffled a few steps, then threw it forward.  Hard.  The ball struck a large rock embedded in the floor of the exhibit.  A small chip of bowling ball flew off in one direction.  A small chip of rock flew off in another.  Delighted, she raced ahead and grabbed the ball, the repeated the process.  Stand up, pick up, throw.  Repeat.

It was at about this minute that I remembered that among the features of the bear habitat was a viewing window.  Not a big one - just a small portal - but big enough to allow a bear to climb out of it if it were to, say, be shattered by a bowling ball.  She was young, but still a good-sized bear, nearly adult sized.  Plus, she was an excellent climber, our zoo was heavily wooded, and we weren't that far from both the perimeter fence and the entry gate.  Her being out would definitely be a problem.  It seemed only a matter of time before the ball eventually met the window  Whether she would think to aim deliberately for the window or whether it might happen by accident was irrelevant.  I had to get the ball back.

I spent the next half hour coaxing, begging, pleading, swearing, threatening (to do what I'm not sure), and then pretending to ignore her, all in hopes of getting her into her den so I could get the ball back.  Maybe, I thought, I wouldn't have to worry.  A few more throws and that ball might break up to be too small for her to damage a window, or even throw effectively.  Surely enough, she was whittling it down, chip by chip.  Eventually, I did lure her inside, locked her in, then ran out and got the ball.

I made a point of explaining to future keepers that I trained, no bowling balls for bears.  The big cat keeper never asked what happened to her bowling ball.

Bear Meets Bear

Theodore Roosevelt: The American grizzly is a symbol of the American character: strength, intelligence, ferocity. Maybe a little blind and reckless at times... but courageous beyond all doubt. And one other trait that goes with all previous.

Reporter:  And that, Mr. President?

Theodore Roosevelt: Loneliness. The American grizzly lives out his life alone. Indomitable, unconquered - but always alone. He has no real allies, only enemies, but none of them as great as he.

Reporter: And you feel this might be an American trait?

Theodore Roosevelt: Certainly. The world will never love us. They respect us - they might even grow to fear us. But they will never love us.

- The Wind and the Lion (1975)

Few experiences are more daunting for a zookeeper than sliding open the shift door that will put two bears - especially an adult male and an adult female - together in the same space for the same time.  Bears are extremely powerful animals, and the males tend to dwarf the females, sometimes being twice as large.  They are also largely solitary.  When brought together, there always remains the possibility that a fight will break out and that it will prove fatal.  Such was the case just a few months ago at a polar bear introduction in Detroit.  I'm sure it was on the minds of the polar bears keepers introducing bears in Chicago recently, seen in the video above.

Bears might not be as solitary as we often give them credit for being, though.  They just want what they want, which usually is food.  They can be very food aggressive and defensive of food resources.  In situations where food is at least temporarily plentiful, however, they can be quite tolerant of one another.  There's no better image of that than a northern salmon stream, where brown bears are packed cheek-to-jowl standing in the water catching fish.  Similar sights have been reported for polar bears gorging on a whale carcass, or black bears in a farmer's fields.

In zoos, where food is abundant and provided regularly, bears may be even more tolerant of each other's company.  In fact, without the activity associated with walking great distances and searching out unpredictable little tidbits or unexpected bonanzas of food, the bears may actually prefer having each other around for companionship and stimulation.   A zoo environment will inevitably find itself deprived compared to the wild in some respects, so it should always try to offset these deficiencies when it can.  I've seen some ridiculously large social groups of bears in zoos, seemingly peaceable.

That doesn't mean any bear introduction can be taken for granted.  They need to be set up for success.  Plenty of space.  Gradual introductions - olfactory, auditory, visual, and then perhaps even tactile contact (through bars or mesh) before full introductions.  Hiding options and escape routes (female bears tend to be smaller than males, which means that in many cases they are better, more agile climbers).  Striking a balance between close observation (to intervene if something goes wrong) and privacy (to reduce stress).

And still, even when everyone does everything right, everything can still go wrong in the blink of an eye... though thankfully not in the case of the video above.

The Ultimate Omnivore

"Then the only other creature who is allowed at the Pack Council - Baloo, the sleepy brown bear who teaches the wolf cubs the Law of the Jungle, old Baloo, who can come and go where he pleases because he eats only nuts and roots and honey - rose up on his hind quarters and grunted.  'The man's cub - the man's cub?' he said.  'I speak for the man's cub."

- Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book

There has been some (not especially strenuous) debate over what kind of bear was Baloo from Rudyard Kipling's classic story, The Jungle Book.  India is home to three species of bear (four if you count the sun bear, which has/had only the tiniest of claw holes in the northeast) - the brown, Asian black, and sloth bears, and Baloo has been depicted as any or all of them.  The text does say "brown bear" but that may have been descriptive only - at any rate, brown bears don't live in the Seoni region where the story takes place, only sloth bears.  In the most recent live action/CGI movie, where the bear was voiced by Bill Murray, he was referred to as a sloth bear, but looked like a brown bear.  In an earlier live action movie, which I saw as a kid when it came out in the 1990's, he was portrayed by an American black bear, a betrayal of geography which left elementary-school-me irrationally irate.

Apart from being in India, all we really have to go on for Baloo's identity is his diet, which does not mention the termites that are the chief delicacy of the sloth bear.  Not that sloth bears won't also eat nuts and roots and honey.  In fact, even though they are one of the most specialized of the bears in terms of their diet, bears - all bears - are renowned for their willingness to eat just about anything.

A birthday cake that I made for my favorite bear.  Maybe doesn't look too pretty, but I heard no complaints from the birthday girl, who seemed to love it.

I've always loved making diets for bears in a zoo.  I like any diet that lets me mix several ingredients, since it lets me pretend that I'm some sort of master chef.  Making breakfast for the bears at the most recent zoo where I cared for them, I would start off by mixing two kinds of dry chow.  Then, I'd add several fruits and vegetables to the mix, making sure not to repeat myself, either within the three feedings I offered each day or between consecutive days.  It was always great when something special came into season so we had more variety to offer.  I'd add a small amount of protein - maybe egg, maybe fish or chicken, once in a while a whole rabbit or guinea pig.  I wished that their pool could have supported live fish, as I would have loved to stock it with trout or eels.  Working with polar bears earlier, I was fascinated each time I scooped an entire tub of lard out of the plastic and plopped it into the bucket.

Then there was enrichment food - raisins, nuts, honey, peanut butter - which I could either scatter over a wide area of smear into high branches or inside hollow logs or on toys for the bears to extricate.  Sometimes I'd offer insects, like mealworms or frozen crickets.  Sometimes there was seasonal browse - they loved tender growing bamboo.

That's a great thing about bears - they love to eat, they are willing to work hard to salvage even the tiniest bit of food.  It would be like me ripping apart my home in search of an M & M that I'm about 85% sure that I dropped somewhere.  Foods that require processing - large fruits and vegetables that need to be ripped open (I've watched entranced as an Andean bear carefully peels a pineapple before eating the whole thing in seconds), gourds with food inside, carcasses to dismember - are a delight for them.  Even bears that we think of as very specialized in terms of their diet love novel foods.  Pandas, the "herbivorous" bears enjoy occasional meat and are even known to scavenge or eat small animals in the wild.  At the other extreme, polar bears, the apex carnivores, love berries and other delicate fruity treats.  I've even known some to enjoy carrots more than fish.

Bears spend much of their waking time in the wild feeding, and a zoo environment and management regime should try to reflect that as much as possible.  They should be fed throughout the day at unpredictable times with varying quantities and types of food.  Keepers and vets should always be on the look out for new options to add to the diet to spice it up.  It's the best enrichment there is for bears.  Feeding them can take five minutes of their day, or hours and hours of their day.  A bear that has the second option will probably be a happier, healthier, and better adjusted bear.

Species Fact Profile: Sloth Bear (Melursus ursinus)

                                                                    Sloth Bear

Melursus ursinus (Shaw, 1791)

Range: South Asia – India, Bangladesh (possibly extirpated – last confirmed sighting here was in the late 1990’s), Nepal, Bhutan – and Sri Lanka.  Unverified historical reports in Myanmar

Habitat: Tropical Lowland Forest (preference for dry forest with rocky outcrops, but will also occur in wet forest), Scrub, and Grassland.  Usually occur below 1500 meters elevation, but sometimes as high as 2000 meters

Diet: Primarily insects (especially termites), also leaves, honey, fruit, flowers, and opportunistically carrion

Social Grouping: Primarily solitary, but will congregate around plentiful food sources. 

Reproduction:  Mating can occur at any time of year, but peaks May through and July.  Pregnancy lasts 4-7 months, with the variability caused by delayed implantation.  1-2 cubs (rarely 3) are born, usually in a cave or other shelter on the ground. Cubs are blind for the first 3 weeks of life and leave the den at 4-5 weeks of age.  Males do no participate in parental care.  Cubs remain with their mother until they are 2-3 years old, often riding on their mother’s back for the first 6-9 months.   

Lifespan: Up to 40 Years (Zoo)

Conservation Status: IUCN Vulnerable, CITES Appendix I.

• Males weigh 80-140 kilograms and stand 60-90 centimeters at the shoulder, measure 1.5-1.9 meters long.  Females are 30-40% lighter at 55-95 kilograms
• Shaggy black fur, especially around the shoulders, with some individuals displaying some brown or grey, which may give a cinnamon appearance.  There is often a light-colored patch of white or yellow fur in the shape of a U or Y on the chest.  It has been suggested that Asian bears possess these markings as a warning to tigers – if the tiger can see the marking, it knows the bear is standing up and facing it, and therefore not as easy victim.  The muzzle is pale with very short hair.  The tail is unusually long for a bear (15-18 centimeters long).  The ears are also larger and floppier than those of other bears, with long hair on them
• Dentition is unusual among bears.  The molars and premolars are relatively small, while the canine teeth are large, presumably for defense.  They are missing the top two front incisors, which allows the bears to more easily suck up insects.
• They are the only bears to regularly carry the young on their back, being equipped with an extra shag of fur on the back which forms a saddle (many other ant- and termite-eating mammals, such as giant anteaters, carry their young on their back.
• Primarily nocturnal, with poor senses of sight and hearing but a well-developed sense of smell.  During the day, they sleep in caves and other shelters.  Mothers with cubs may be more diurnal than nocturnal to reduce exposure of their cubs to potential predators
• Poor climbers than many other bears (though still capable of climbing) because of their long, curved claws.  Will climb to feed or to rest, but not to escape predators.  Young bears are better climbers than adults.  They are decent swimmers
• They are the only bear species that feeds primarily on insects, and have several unique adaptations.  Nests are ripped open with the long claws up to 10 centimeters long (feet are turned inwards, which while causing an awkward gait perhaps makes the bears more efficient diggers), and then the bear blows away loose dust and soil.  The long, flexible snout is then positioned over the opening forming a tube, and the bear begins to vacuum insects into its mouth.  The bear has the ability of voluntarily open and close its nostrils, keeping dust and insects from going up the nose.  When feeding, they may be heard up to 185 meters away.
• Mothers feed their cubs a regurgitated mixture of fruit and honey, which hardens into a dark yellow mass that some local peoples regard as a delicacy, called “Bear’s Bread”
• Home ranges are marked with claw marks, but intruders seem to be tolerated, or at least not excluded.  Several males may trail a receptive female but not fight with each other
• Potential predators include tigers, leopards, and dholes.  If threatened, they will stand erect and use their clawed paws as weapons, or may charge.  Sloth bears have a reputation of being unusually aggressive, possibly a response to living alongside tigers
• Early scientists thought that this species was more closely related to sloths than to bears, with its large, curved claws and its shaggy coat
• Two recognized subspecies: M. u. ursinus on the mainland and M. u. inornatus on Sri Lanka.  The Sri Lankan sloth bear is smaller with shorter fur, sometimes lacks the white chest markings
• Habitat loss is the primary cause for decline, though they benefit from sharing protected habitat with several more high-profile conservation species, such as tiger, Asian elephant, and Indian rhinoceros.  The next major threat is hunting, especially for their gall bladders, which are highly sought after in traditional medicine they are also hunted for local demand.  An indirect source of decline has been the destruction of termite mounds in order to obtain the fine soil, which is desirable for building tennis courts.
• Sloth bears have historically been captured and trained by the nomadic Qualanders of India, who traveled the region with their dancing bears, a practice which still continues today, though not nearly as commonly.  The practice involved putting a ring through the nose of the bear, removing its teeth, and encouraging it to dance, often through coercion.  Bear dancing is now banned, with efforts to steer former handlers into other professions
• Reputation of being very aggressive towards humans, with several attacks reports, less likely to flee if cornered than many other bears.  British authorities said that natives feared the sloth bear more than tigers, with survivors of attacks being highly disfigured.  One particularly famous sloth bear was the Sloth Bear of Mysore, India, responsible for the deaths of at least twelve people and mauling two dozen others in 1957, before being shot and killed by hunter Kenneth Anderson.  Some of the bear’s victims were partially eaten

Room for Bears to Roam

When I was a (very young) kid, there wasn't anything particular unusual about going to a major zoo and seeing at least half of the world's eight bear species.  Giant pandas were always rare - I think at their peak they were in four US zoos at one time - but most of the others were reasonably common.

Today, most zoos - even the largest - have far fewer bears.  The Bronx Zoo has one species, Denver Zoo (following the departure of its polar bears) has one species, Philadelphia Zoo has two while the National Zoo has three.  St. Louis Zoo has four.  San Diego Zoo and Columbus Zoo are particularly bear-rich with five species each, but they are something of an outlier.  What gives?

It turns out that bears are a species we've been keeping for a very long time - but maybe not as well as we should have been.  They are tough, hardy animals who handle a variety of climatic conditions, eat whatever we throw at them, don't have too many medical problems, live a long time, and breed fairly well.  Historically, I think that "can do" attitude of bears led zoos to take them for granted and assume that they were thriving when they were simply surviving.  

Bears are fairly big animals, with even the smallest species being roughly human-sized.  They are very intelligent and get bored easily, and tend to be fairly active in the wild.  Part of it is feeding ecology.  A big cat like a lion or tiger makes a kill, which uses a lot of activity, then gluts itself and sleeps for the rest of the day.  If you're going to sleep constantly, sure, you're pretty easy to keep happy.  Bears, on the other paw, spend much of their day foraging, usually not getting one big kill but feeding on countless grubs, seeds, berries, nuts, eggs, etc. all day.    The difference is like one person sitting down to a Thanksgiving dinner, then sleeping it off, to another person who is searching for a bag of trail mix scattered around in every room of their house.

When I was a kid, the local zoo had six species of bears - but if you lumped all of the space they were given together, you'd probably wind up with one, maybe two decent-sized bear habitats.  What you actually had were six small cages, none of which was really doing its job, unless you defined its job simply as "keep the bear inside."  We know now that bears - especially the biggest, browns and polars, need much larger exhibits.  Zoos have responded by trimming their bear collections to make more room for the bears that remain.  Years ago, when I first visited St. Louis Zoo, its historic bear grottos housed grizzlies, polar bears, Andean bears, and American black bears in a row.  The zoo relocated its Andean bears to a new exhibit and phased out the American black bears.  The newly freed-up space was split between the grizzlies and polars, giving them both much larger habitats.

My local zoo has pared down to two species - and even there, there are concerns the habitats aren't big enough and we are looking to expand.  That particular zoo has been keeping bears for well over 100 years - but as we find out, we constantly have more to learn about bears and keeping them healthy and happy.

The Bear Line

There are eight living species of bear today, all of which can be seen, with varying degrees of commonality, in zoos around the world.   When I was a child, I could see six of the eight within a single morning on a trip to my local zoo, all within a hundred yards of each other.  With my feet planted on one spot, it was sometimes possible to see three or four without moving my head.

Let's meet the cast:

Brown Bear: "The Archetypal Bear."  This is the bear that everyone usually thinks of first when they think of bears.  It's image is so tied to bears that the scientific name literally translates to "Bear, bear."  It's the species of bear that ours has the longest history with, dating back to prehistoric times.  Within recent centuries, its range stretched from Mexico to Morocco, Ireland to Japan.  Across this range, it was broken into several subspecies, from the tiny brown bears of the Syrian desert to the hulking behemoths of Kodiak Island.  Among these is Ursus arctos horribilis, the bear we call the grizzly.

American Black Bear: "The Common Bear."  This bear, found over North America, is the most common of the world's bears and is actually on something of a rebound.  It's numbers are expanding in many areas, and is the bear that many Americans are most likely to encounter.  While smaller than the brown bear where their ranges overlap, it can still be an impressively large animal.  Despite the name, black bears aren't always black.  Some are cinnamon red, or glacial blue, or brown (but still aren't "brown bears").  One population in British Columbia is even a ghostly white.

Polar Bear: "The Marine Bear."  Sitting on top of the world, the polar bear is the only bear that the US government classifies as a marine mammal.  On average it is the biggest of bears, though the Kodiak subspecies of brown bear can be bigger.  In recent years, the polar bear has become best known to us as a symbol of global climate change and the poster-species for fighting global warming.

Asian Black Bear: "The Moon Bear."  This bear is, in many ways, the Asian answer to the American black bear, though it is rarer and much less-studied.  At a quick glance, the two look alike, but the Asian black bear has a shaggy mane and bigger ears.  It also usually has a white crescent of fur on its chest, for which it receives the nickname of "moon bear."  Confusingly enough, many other bear species can also sometimes bear this marking.

Sloth Bear: "The Termite Bear."  This South Asian bear looks so strange that European explorers weren't sure if it was a sloth-like bear or a bear-like sloth.   In a family of generalist feeders, the sloth bear is an odd creature, specializing on eating termites - perhaps it would be better named the anteater bear.  Despite its relatively small size and insectivorous diet, this bear has a reputation of being one of the most aggressive of bears and, in its range, is feared more than the tiger by some.

Sun Bear: "The Honey Bear."  This is the smallest of the bears, and (while most bears do climb) the most arboreal.  It resembles a giant pug dog more than a bear, and in some ways acts more like a monkey, spending all day climbing the trees collecting fruits.  The name comes from the beautiful golden crescent splashed across its chest, resembling the rising sun.

Andean (Spectacled) Bear: "The South American Bear."  The only bear found south of the equator, this is the last remnant of a now-extinct lineage of bears that once roamed the Americas - the short-faced bears.  This species diverged long ago from the previous six and is not as closely related.  This bear is named both for its range in the Andes Mountains, as well as for the facial markings, a cream colored pair of circles around the eyes that resemble spectacles.  

Giant Panda: "The Bamboo Bear."  Perhaps you could call this "the unbear" as well.  It's so different from the other bears that for decades scientists weren't sure if it even was a bear.  Even more of an outlier among the bears in terms of diet than the sloth bear, the giant panda almost exclusively eats bamboo.  Although it is today one of the most famous and recognizable of all animals in the world - the endangered species to many people - it was only known outside of its native range for less than two hundred years.