Brown bear

Distribution

Species range provided by WWF's Wildfinder.

Habitats

The following habitats are found across the Brown bear distribution range. Find out more about these environments, what it takes to live there and what else inhabits them.

• Coastal
• Mediterranean forest
• Mountain grassland
• Mountains
• Taiga
• Broadleaf forest
• Coniferous forest
• Temperate grassland
• Tropical coniferous forest
• Tundra

Behaviours

Discover what these behaviours are and how different plants and animals use them.

• Helpless young
• Hierarchical
• Acoustic communication
• Hibernation
• Kleptoparasitic
• Maternal care
• Nomadic
• Polymorphism
• Adapted to running
• Chemical communication
• Torpor
• Visual communication
• Viviparous

About

The brown bear (Ursus arctos) is a large bear distributed across much of northern Eurasia and North America. Adult bears generally weigh between 100 and 635 kg (220 and 1,400 lb) and its largest subspecies, the Kodiak bear, rivals the polar bear as the largest member of the bear family and as the largest land-based predator. There are several recognized subspecies within the brown bear species. In North America, two types are generally recognized, the coastal brown bear and the inland grizzly bear, and the two types could broadly define all brown bear subspecies. An adult grizzly living inland in Yukon may weigh as little as 80 kg (180 lb), while an adult brown bear in nearby coastal Alaska living on a steady, nutritious diet of spawning salmon may weigh as much as 680 kg (1,500 lb). The exact number of overall brown subspecies remains in debate.

While the brown bear's range has shrunk and it has faced local extinctions, it remains listed as a least concern species by the IUCN with a total population of approximately 200,000. As of 2012, this and the American black bear are the only bear species not classified as threatened by the IUCN. However, the Californian, North African (Atlas bear), and Mexican subspecies were hunted to extinction in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the Marsican brown bear in central Italy is believed to have a population of just 30 to 40 bears.

The brown bear's principal range includes parts of Russia, the United States (mostly Alaska), Canada, the Carpathian region (especially Romania), The brown bear is recognized as a national and state animal in several European countries. It is the most widely distributed of all bears.

Read more at Wikipedia