WildFact
›
Information Section
›
Terrestrial Wild Animals
›
Carnivorous and Omnivores Animals, Excluding Felids
›
Bears
Bear Size ~
Bear Size ~
|
Bear Size ~
|
On taking a fresh new look at Yellowstone grizzly bear weights, I am seeing that the dominant males in the park in recent years are weighing on average about 460 pounds. Even though they are feeding better on wolf-kills than before the wolf reintroduction in 1994, they are no longer "dumpster-diving" for human left-overs. The average weight for bears 10 years old and older has actually dropped. However, this by no means establishes that they are less healthy.
The weight averages for grizzlies is determined by their environment and foods available. Though a place of great beauty, Yellowstone National Park can be a harsh environment. The grizzlies there appear to be in about the same weight-range as India's tigers. 
The general difference between the canine teeth of the Brown bear and Black bear (Asiatic).
Can you notice that?  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author
Some impressive teeth !!
I know maybe not the largest but let's not forget pandas  Im trying to raise awareness ! http://projectpanda.net
Giant pandas' are awesome. They are our most primitive living bears. I remember when most experts believed them to be closer to the raccoon family than actual bears. The science of dna proved them wrong.
 *This image is copyright of its original author
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303330204579246003604081632
To Learn About Obesity, Researchers Turn to Grizzly Bears In Washington State, researchers are studying grizzly bears, not the typical lab rat By JONATHAN D. ROCKOFF Dec. 15, 2013 10:31 p.m. ET PULLMAN, Wash.—On a recent visit to a laboratory where he researches obesity, Kevin Corbit walked over to one of the patients he is studying to say hello. Then he clasped a claw. Dr. Corbit, a scientist at drug maker Amgen Inc., is conducting his research on grizzly bears. He believes insights gleaned from the animals, who can take in as much as 58,000 calories in a day and weigh 1,000 pounds, could reshape understanding of obesity and identify new treatments for a condition that has stymied doctors and drug developers. "When I thought about obesity, I thought about Yogi bear," Dr. Corbit says. Ursus arctos horribilis isn't the typical lab rat. A grizzly can lift a heavy tree trunk—with one paw. In the wild, the bears win duels with wolves and mountain lions. They are powerful enough to tear through the side of a barn or even crush a small car. Also, the bears growl. But bears do know a thing or two about weight gain, and that makes them more like people than rats whose genes are manipulated to make them obese. In the weeks before hibernating, bears pack away enough apples, berries and salmon to put on 100 pounds or more under their brown fur. Their bad cholesterol jumps and blood pressure spikes. But unlike humans, their health doesn't suffer. Bears' arteries don't clog from the gorging, nor do the animals battle heart attacks or turn into diabetics. To figure out why, the researchers draw the bears' blood, biopsy their fat deposits and listen to their hearts—carefully. Few places are available for this kind of bear study. Dr. Corbit travels from Amgen's Thousand Oaks, Calif., labs to Washington State University, which says it has the only facility in the world housing adult grizzlies for research. Behind chain-link fences, the 12 bears wander along grassy hills and among Douglas firs and Ponderosa pines, or they relax inside concrete dens and runs. When winter nears, they hibernate. Bears at the center, set up 27 years ago, are either born at the facility or rescued from places such as Yellowstone National Park because they got too close to humans and would otherwise have been euthanized. A few times, staffers have taken cubs home for several weeks, until they want to climb the curtains, roam around the house and gnaw on electrical cords. "They go from helpless to hellions," says Charles Robbins, the bear center's director. The researchers employ some unique safety precautions. Fences are electrified, and buried deep under the ground so the bears can't dig them up. The bears are kept in steel crates when examined, and anesthetized before scientists take some tissue. Because the animals are good at using their front paws for grabbing and holding, they're trained to present their back legs for blood draws. Honey helps. As Dr. Corbit looks on one recent morning, a 10-year-old female bear named Mica stretches out inside a steel handling crate lapping up a honey and water solution from a bottle inserted between two crate bars. The honey diverts the attention of the 400-pound bear from Lynne Nelson, who, reaching through the crate, runs a probe across the grizzly's chest to get an ursine echocardiogram of the beating heart. Dr. Nelson, an associate professor of cardiology at WSU who is collaborating with Dr. Corbit, works quickly. "Even a bear can get full of honey," she says. Medical research is studded with the study of strange creatures, from sea squirts to zebrafish. Narcoleptic dogs have furnished insights into sleep disorders, while Antarctic penguins are providing lessons on the biology of fasting. Yet most drug discovery takes place in rats and mice, as well as test tubes. Research on large, wild animals is unusual, partly because of the challenges. A bloodied arm taught Carl Luer, who studies the cancer-resisting qualities of sharks at the Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Fla., to avoid lemon sharks. He prefers nurse sharks, which are "very amenable to handling," he says, and fine with the small volume of water held by the tanks he puts them in during exams. When Dr. Luer began the research around 1990, there was little information about the shark immune system. To figure it out, he draws the fish's blood (it requires help holding the sharks down and plenty of practice finding the blood vessels under a column of vertebrae in their tails) and performs surgery (first he puts the sharks in a cooler filled with water containing an anesthetic). The challenges were worth it, Dr. Luer says, because of the opportunity to discover the mechanisms that evolved over 400 million years to protect the fish from illness. "I spent about 10 years trying to induce cancer in sharks but was not successful," he says. This year, he helped publish a paper identifying how certain compounds in sharks kill tumor cells. Rare is a company such as Ablynx NV, a Belgian biotech, which scatters 150 llamas and alpacas across four farms for its work developing new drugs based on tiny disease-fighting antibodies unique to the animals. The antibodies are also made by camels, but Belgium doesn't have a supply of camels. "They are also bigger and more difficult to handle than llamas and alpacas," says Ablynx CEO Edwin Moses. By working with grizzlies, Amgen is stepping outside the industry's research comfort zone, concedes Alexander Kamb, the company's research executive who greenlighted the project two years ago. But typical approaches to studying obesity have still left scientists scratching their heads, and the few approved drugs have been found to reduce relatively small percentages of body weight. Meanwhile, bears have figured out how to be healthily obese and then lose massive amounts of weight without problems. "I want to learn how the grizzly bears work their magic," Dr. Kamb says. Dr. Corbit, who says he had worked "exclusively on mice" before joining Amgen in 2011, says his studies of fat and blood samples suggest the bears respond to excessive weight gain differently than many people. The bears seem to adjust their sensitivity to the hormone insulin that controls how much the fat and sugars in food are broken down and stored for energy. The bears are more sensitive to insulin while putting on pounds for hibernation. When hibernating a few weeks later, the bears shut off their insulin responsiveness entirely. Over the next two years of the project, Dr. Corbit plans to explore how—eventually with help from sequencing the bears' genome. "That would really accelerate the discovery research for bears," he says. Write to Jonathan D. Rockoff at [email protected] 
Very interesting read, @
With all the "body positive" crap the society promotes, only further making people unhealthy, it's good that at least someone takes an objective look at it. (10-02-2016, 08:43 PM)Majingilane Wrote: Very interesting read, @ Yes; I considered this a good post but I was not at all sure where to post it. 'Bear Size' is probably not the best choice but all I could think of.
From "Trip to the Toronto Zoo" post #10 by GrizzlyClaws: I think the Alaskan peninsula grizzlies were even larger than the Kodiak bears.
357 kg vs 312 kg based on the average. ( in my own words )... 357 kg = 787 pounds / 312 kg = 688 pounds. Roughly a difference of 100 pounds. That's not much when talking about these behemoths. Which of these big coastal brown bears is the biggest has been the subject of discussion a few times in the past. I personally believe the biggest of these is more a matter of individuals than subspecies; ( is subspecies a term still acceptable? ). The heaviest ( wild ) brown bear on record weighed in at 1656 pounds ( 751 kg ). He was a Kodiak brown bear. But, so few big brown bears are actually weighed that this proves nothing. In the Boone and Crockett Club, all of the record bears, according to the skulls collected, are Kodiak bears. Again, this proves nothing. I have learned that the size of a bear cannot be determined by either skull size nor foot print size. Also, the peninsula grizzly has a narrower skull. I once read that Kodiak bears have the thickest heaviest bones of any brown bear. I would think that the Kamchatka bear would have the same. Attempting to get an accurate average weight for a mature male brown bear of any given population is a tricky business. To start with, they must all be weight during the same time of year. IMO the best time would be during the Summer months. Then, they should all be within a tight age group; I would say from 10 to 15 years old. We can forget about stomach contents. We are not likely to find a brown bear on empty. I would call this a draw. Your thoughts?
http://www.wideopenspaces.com/new-world-...-gun-pics/
The new world record grizzly bear came so close that archer Rodney Debias could smell the bear and hear him breathing. Rodney Debias of Windber, Pennsylvania took an Alaskan grizzly bear in 2009 that was officially recognized as the new Pope & Young world record earlier this year. Although an experienced and successful bowhunter, Debias’ dream of taking a grizzly bear with his bow eluded him for many years. Circumstances, however, were in his favor when in 2009 he was able to fly to Unalakleet, Alaska to pursue his dream. Although Debias and his guide, Don Stiles, saw the big bear two or three days into the hunt, it took eight full days of hard hunting, in nasty, icy conditions before Debias had his opportunity at the monster. Of that first glimpse of the record bruin, Debias recounted in a 2011 story for “Bowhunter” magazine, “Don spotted a beautiful blond bear 600 yards away, and I noticed another bear 100 yards below Blondie. Don guessed the blond at 7½ feet, the other at 7 feet. As we watched them, a huge chocolate bear ran between the two. He looked like a Mack Truck passing between two Honda Civics!” But after three more days without seeing any bear or even a track, Debias and Stiles were ready to give up on their plan. That’s the moment when “The Big Guy” appeared. The grizzly had suddenly appeared at just 17 yards away. The two men were exposed, with no cover, but had the wind in their faces as the bear kept moving in their direction. Debias recalled that at 10 yards, “Suddenly he stopped, nose in the air, nostrils flared. I could hear him draw a deep breath. He exhaled. I could smell him. He drew another breath, this time curling his lips outward. I was amazed at his size. He exhaled again. He knew something was up…He took two steps, stood straight up, and looked down on us.” Amazingly the bear did not detect the two men. Debias had his bow resting on his knee but dared not lift it to draw. The big bruin moved past the hunters as Debias waited for the bear to look the other way. At 29 yards he had his shot and sent an arrow through the bear’s chest. At 60 yards the grizzly dropped. After some time, confusion, and rule changes, Pope & Young scored the bear at 27 1/16 and crowned it the new World Record. Debias’ grizzly is also the largest grizzly bear taken by a hunter with any weapon. The bear beat the previous World Record grizzly score of 26 3/16 by almost a full inch. That bear was killed in 2004 by Dennis Dunn and was also taken in Unalakleet, Alaska. One of my favorite parts of Debias’ story is his endcap, where he gives special mention to the people he met and hunted with in Unalakleet, Alaska. It speaks to one of the reasons why hunters do what they do, and to the brotherhood or sisterhood of the larger hunting community. “As big as the bear was,” he says, “just as important to me was the time I’d spent with Don, Virgil and Eric Umphenour, William ‘Middy’ Johnson (whose grandfather was one of the original Mushers on the serum run to Nome, now known as the Iditarod), and especially the people of Unalakleet.” “When life has you down and you think there’s no good in the world, buy a plane ticket to Unalakleet and walk down the dirt street lined with humble houses. Strangers will invite you into their homes to enjoy their best fish and to share stories of their culture. In return, they expect only that you share stories of your own. The people of Unalakleet are the most wonderful, giving people I’ve ever met. Yes, I arrived wondering how anyone could live there. Now I wonder how anyone could leave.”
Goliath - one of the biggest captive Kodiak bears on record - possibly in second place to Clyde. I hate to think that this small ( for him ) cage with its concrete floor might have been Goliath's only known world.
 *This image is copyright of its original author
http://www.wideopenspaces.com/gallery-hu...ears-pics/
GALLERY OF HUMONGOUS (REALLY, REALLY BIG) KODIAK BEARS  (11-09-2016, 11:39 PM)brotherbear Wrote: http://www.wideopenspaces.com/gallery-hu...ears-pics/ I just question in video youtube why big male polar bear scared grizlly bear (11-10-2016, 08:13 AM)P.T.Sondaica Wrote:(11-09-2016, 11:39 PM)brotherbear Wrote: http://www.wideopenspaces.com/gallery-hu...ears-pics/ Give me the post number of that youtube video. |
| Users browsing this thread: |
| 10 Guest(s) |