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 300 and 680 kilograms (660 and 1,500 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 300 kg (660 lb), while an adult brown bear in coastal Alaska or Russia living on a steady, nutritious diet of spawning salmon may weigh 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. However, the Californian, North African (Atlas bear), and Mexican subspecies were hunted to extinction in the 1870s, 1922, and more recently, respectively, and the not officially recognized 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 in Alaska), Canada, the Carpathian region (especially Romania , but also Ukraine, Slovakia, and so on), the Balkans, Sweden and Finland, where it is the national animal. The brown bear is the most widely distributed of all bears.

Read more at Wikipedia