Interesting Facts and Information about Bear

Interesting Facts about Bear

• The English word "bear" comes from Old English bera and belongs to a family of names for the bear in Germanic languages that originate from an adjective meaning "brown".
• Parictis is the earliest genus of bear known. It was a very small and graceful ursid with a skull only 7 cm long. Parictis first appeared in North America in 38 million years ago.
• Some polar bears and Kodiak bears have been weighed at over 750 kg.
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• Adult male Kodiak bears average 480 to 533 kg compared to an average of 386 to 408 kg in adult male polar bears.
• World smallest bear is sun bears of Asia, Which average weigh is 65 kg for male and 45 kg for female .Females also can only 20 kg. Males are 10–20% larger than females.
• All medium sized bear species average weigh of male is 100kg to 120kg and female is 60 to 85.
• Brown bear's running speed is 48km per hour.
• Bears can stand on their hind feet and sit up straight with remarkable balance. Bears' no retractable claws are used for digging, climbing, tearing, and catching prey.
• Bears have an excellent sense of smell, better than the dogs (Canidae), or possibly any other mammal.
• This sense of smell is used for signalling between bears and for finding food. Smell is the principal sense used by bears to find most of their food.
• The American black bear is a medium-sized bear native to North America. It is the continents smallest and most widely distributed bear species. The American black bear is the world's most common bear species.
• American black bears are not closely related to brown bears and polar bears; genetic studies reveal that they split from a common ancestor 5.05 million years ago. Both American and Asian black bears are considered sister taxa, and are more closely related to each other than to other species of bear.
• Bees, beehives, and honey are important food items of sun bears
• The total Canadian black bear population is between 396,000 and 476,000 based on surveys taken in the mid-1990s in seven Canadian provinces.
• The overall population of black bears in the United States has been estimated to range between 339,000 and 465,000.
• The total length of adult bear skulls was found to average 262 to 317 mm (10.3 to 12.5 in).
• Black bears have good eyesight, and have been proven experimentally to be able to learn visual discrimination tasks based on colour faster than chimpanzees and as fast as dogs.
• They are also capable of rapidly learning to distinguish different shapes, such as small triangles, circles and squares.
• Black bear weight tends to vary according to age, sex, health, and season. Seasonal variation in weight is very pronounced: in autumn, their pre-den weight tends to be 30% higher than in spring.
• The gestation period is 235 days.
• At birth time the cubs weigh can 280 to 450 g, and 20.5 cm in length.
• They open their eye after 28 to 40 days.
• Cubs are dependent on their mother's milk for 30 weeks, and will reach independence at 16–18 months.
• At the age of six weeks, they attain 900 g. by 8 weeks they reach 2.5 kg, and by the age of 6 months they weigh 18 to 27 kg.
• They reach sexual maturity at the age of three years, and attain their full growth at 5 years.
• The average lifespan in the wild is 18 years, and can survive for 23 years.
• The record age of a wild specimen was 31 years, while that in captivity was 44 years.