Get ready for some very bad puns…!
Bear Gills
Watching brown bears fish for salmon on Brooks Falls is one of the all-time highlights of the natural world, and it’s a must for any wildlife photographer.
I went there in July 2015 during the annual salmon run, and I took probably my best ever photograph while I was there (see above).
This is a bit of an hommage to Thomas D Mangelsen’s famous ‘Catch of the Day’ image from the 1980s, but it was very difficult to capture.
I wanted the bear’s mouth to be open and the fish to be in mid-air, but I only managed two such shots in a week!
If you want to go there yourself, you’ll have to be prepared for booking a year in advance, spending thousands of pounds and having to put up with a door-to-door journey of around 37 hours!
…But it’s worth it.
If you want a few tips on how to shoot a brown bear, just take a look at my blog post.
Basic facts
Order: Carnivora
Family: Ursidae
Species: Brown bear/grizzly bear/bruin
Scientific name: Ursus arctos
Subspecies: Eurasian brown bear or European brown bear (Ursus arctos arctos), Kamchatkan brown bear or Far Eastern brown bear (Ursus arctos beringianus), East Siberian brown bear (Ursus arctos collaris), Gobi bear (Ursus arctos gobiensis), Himalayan brown bear or red bear, isabelline bear (Ursus arctos isabellinus), Ussuri brown bear or Amur brown bear, Ezo brown bear, Manchurian grizzly bear, black grizzly bear (Ursus arctos lasiotus), Marsican brown bear or Apennine brown bear (Ursus arctos marsicanus), Tibetan blue bear or horse bear (Ursus arctos pruinosus), Cantabrian brown bear or Iberian brown bear (Ursus arctos pyrenaicus), Syrian brown bear (Ursus arctos syriacus), Grizzly bear or North American brown bear (Ursus arctos horribilis), Dall Island brown bear (Ursus arctos dalli), Alaska Peninsula brown bear (Ursus arctos gyas), Kodiak bear (Ursus arctos middendorffi), Sitka brown bear (Ursus arctos sitkensis), Stickeen brown bear (Ursus arctos stikeenensis)
Mass: 217 kg (478 lb) for males and 152 kg (335 lb) for females - although there is huge seasonal variation, and coastal bears weigh roughly twice as much as bears from the interior
Height at shoulder: 70 to 153 cm (2 ft 4 in to 5 ft 0 in)
Length of head and body: 1.4 to 2.8 m (4 ft 7 in to 9 ft 2 in)
Appearance: Bear with a large head, sharp teeth and fur that varies in colour from brown to black to cream.
Top speed: 35 mph (56 km/h)
Gestation period: eight weeks (although delayed implantation means the fertilised egg floats freely in the uterus for six months beforehand)
Lifespan: 25 years (40-50 years in captivity)
IUCN Red List Status: Least concern
Population: 110,000 mature individuals, stable
Habitat: Forest, Shrubland, Grassland, Wetlands (inland), Desert, Artificial/Terrestrial
Distribution: North America, Europe (excluding Russia) and northern Asia
Habitat
Brown bears are more adaptable than any other species of bear and can be found in all kinds of different environments, including Arctic shrubland, temperate rainforests and the dry Asian steppe.
They can also live anywhere from sea level up to 5,000 metres.
The habitat dictates the bears’ diet, with the coastal regions of North America and Eastern Russia being able to support large numbers of carnivorous bears due to the easy availability of ungulates or spawning salmon in the summer - an adult bear can eat up to 90 lbs of fish in a single day!
Brown bears are omnivorous, so if salmon or mammals are not particularly numerous, they can also survive on insects, fruit, grasses, herbs, roots, acorns, pine cones, mushrooms and nuts.
In fact, 90% of the brown bear’s diet comes from vegetable matter.
Hunting
Brooks Falls
For two weeks in July every year, a million salmon make their way up the Brooks River in Alaska towards their spawning grounds, and every year the brown bears are there to meet them!
This pattern is repeated in a number of northerly coastal regions in Alaska, Canada and Russia.
During the spawning period at Brooks Falls, you’ll regularly see around 10-12 bears around the waterfall, and the bears often fight for the best spots.
They all have different strategies - as you can see from the picture above:
Some stand on top of the falls and try to catch the fish as they jump up.
Some wait below and ‘snorkel’ around in the water, hoping to catch any fish that fail to make the leap.
Some wait on the bank and dive into the water if they see a salmon close to shore.
The dominant alpha male might not fish at all - he can just walk up to any bear that’s successfully caught a salmon and demand it as a kind of ‘tribute’!
Salmon is a great source of nutrition, but the sheer numbers of fish can make the bears very fussy.
Like humans, they like the ‘caviar’ inside pregnant female salmon, so they’ll often slash open a fish and check for that first. If there aren’t any eggs, they’ll sometimes just throw the fish away and try and catch another one!
They also like the skin of the salmon - which is fatty and therefore rich in flavour - so bears will often strip the skin from the fish and eat that first.
This feast only lasts for about a fortnight, so the bears have to find other things to eat during the rest of the year, but they do get a ‘bonus’ in September when hundreds of dead fish float downriver after the spawning is over.
Brown bears also hunt for other animals, including big game such as moose and bison plus crabs, clams, birds and their eggs, rodents and small mammals such as marmots, mice, rats, voles, lemmings and ground squirrels.
When hunting a larger animal, the brown bear will generally pin it to the ground and rip it apart, eating it alive.
It may also bite or slap the prey to stun it (or even break its neck or back) in order to knock it over and allow the bear to feed.
Bears have an advantage in snowy conditions due to their large paws, which allow them to stay on the surface of the snow rather than falling through like moose or bison.
They are also prone to attack at riverbeds where the prey has less chance of escaping due to the muddy or slippery conditions.
Like most predators, bears will target the younger or weaker animals, and they will either use their sense of smell to locate them or charge a herd and try to catch any stragglers.
It is also common for bears to feed on carrion, and they will often try to steal kills from other predators such as wolves, cougars, tigers and black bears.
Bear Necessities
Breeding
Females come to sexual maturity from four to eight years of age, the average being five.
Males tend to be around a year older when they are big and strong enough to compete for mating rights.
Females come into oestrus for two weeks every three or four years, and the scent of their urine attracts males.
The mating season is from mid-May up to early July for the more northerly individuals.
Bears are serially monogamists, and they remain with the same mate for a couple of days or as long as two weeks.
However, that doesn’t stop them being promiscuous, and paternity tests have shown that cubs in up to 29% of litters don’t have the same father!
Males try to mate with as many females as they can, around one a week, while females can mate with up to four to eight males while in heat and sometimes two in a single day.
Copulation is vigorous and lasts an average of 23-24 minutes but sometimes as long as an hour!
Once fertilised, a female’s egg floats freely in the uterus for six months and then attaches to the uterine wall during winter hibernation.
Eight weeks afterwards, the cubs are born - but the father is absent and the mother doesn’t even wake up!
A litter usually consists of one to three cubs, but it’s sometimes as many as six. Litter size generally depends on the size and age of the mother, the location and the quality of the food supply.
At birth, cubs are blind, have no teeth or hair and only weigh 350 to 510 g (0.77 to 1.12 lbs).
They suckle from their mother until spring or early summer when they are big enough to start walking for long distances and foraging for solid food.
Cubs imitate their mother in learning how to hunt, fish and fight, and they generally remain with her for 1.5-4.5 years in North America (2.5 years on average).
Like lion cubs, bear cubs are very susceptible to other predators such as wolves, and a male bear might kill cubs in order to bring their mother into oestrus, which will generally come only four days later.
The female will fight to defend them - even against a much bigger male - and the cubs will probably climb a tree to try and escape.
Sibling Rivalry
Mother Bear
Bearing Left
Territory
Brown bears have large home ranges and are not usually territorial except when fighting over resources.
Males generally cover more ground in order to gain access to food and females, while females stick closer to home, partly in order to protect their cubs and avoid meeting dangerous male bears.
Territories also vary across the world:
Coastal Alaska: home ranges for females are up to 24 km2 (9.3 sq mi) and for males are up to 89 km2 (34 sq mi).
British Columbia: bears of the two sexes travel relatively compact home ranges of 115 km2 (44 sq mi) and 318 km2 (123 sq mi).
Yellowstone National Park: home ranges for females are up to 281 km2 (108 sq mi) and up to 874 km2 (337 sq mi) for males.
Romania: the largest home range was recorded for adult males (3,143 km2, 1214 sq mi).
Central Arctic of Canada: where food sources are quite sparse, home ranges range up to 2,434 km2 (940 sq mi) in females and 8,171 km2 (3,155 sq mi) in males
Communication
Standing Bear
Bears produce a variety of facial expressions, each of which is generally used in specific circumstances:
‘Relaxed-face’
Description: ears pointed to the sides and mouth either closed or loosely open
Usage: everyday expression
‘Relaxed open-mouth face’
Description: ears pointed to the sides and mouth either closed or loosely open
Usage: during social play
‘Alert face’
Description: ears are cocked and alert, the eyes wide open but the mouth is closed or only slightly open
Usage: when looking at other animals from a distance
‘Tense closed mouth face’
Description: ears laid back and mouth closed
Usage: when feeling threatened
‘Puckered-lip face’
Description: protruding upper lip and ears that go from cocked and alert when at a certain distance to laid back when closer or when retreating
Usage: when approached by another bear
‘Jaw gape face’
Description: open mouth with visible lower canines and hanging lips
Usage: to express aggression
‘Biting face’
Description: similar to the "relaxed open-mouth face" except the ears are flattened and the eyes wide enough to expose the sclera
Usage: to express aggression
In addition, bears can make a variety of noises:
huffing: harsh, repeated exhalations (two per second) when tense
woofing: single noise when startled
growling: harsh and gutteral and can range from short and low grrr to a continuous rolling rumble
roaring: ‘thunderous’ growl audible up to 2 km (1.2 m) away
bawling: ‘waugh! waugh!’ sound when seeking contact, eg mothers and cubs or males when seeking a mate
Threats
This is Unbearable
The world brown bear population is fairly stable, and they don’t really have any natural predators (except tigers in Asia), but there is always the threat from man.
The most direct threat is from hunting, but where bears and humans come into frequent contact, another risk is that the bear comes to see them as a source of food: ‘A fed bear is a dead bear’.
The IUCN deems the brown bear to be in its ‘Least Concern’ category, but it still faces a number of threats to its existence:
residential and commercial development
agriculture and aquaculture
energy production and mining
transportation and service corridors
biological resource use
human intrusions and disturbance
natural system modifications
pollution
climate change and severe weather
Overall, it looks like the brown bear will be with us for a good while yet, so maybe it’s time to get out your credit card and book that trip to Brooks Falls while you still can…!
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