Russian Brown Bears

[brotherbear]

An interesting find: http://shaggygod.proboards.com/board/63/...ture-links 
 
Rough translation from Russian to English:


Irkuyem or unusual bear

Before us three essays on unusual bears. However, some of these bears is called a purely arbitrary.

From the book by Oleg Kuvaeva "It's a great bear":

"... In 1898, first became aware of the world's largest predator - a huge brown bear ..." - wrote to the Belgian zoologist Bernad Eyvelmans.

On the terrifying monster also talked shepherds deaf Chaun valley in Chukotka. Farley Mouet, Canadian writer, in his book "People of deer-edge brought stories you hear from the people of Alaska, about the terrible growth of the brown beast twice polar bear.

I came to believe that if organized an expedition to Chukotka, it may be fortunate enough to sort out all this hell with the bears excessive quantities, which they say is in the Chukotka region, then on the Kamchatka Peninsula, the Alaska ...

With that I came in "Around the World." The starting point of searching, we have chosen El'gygytgyn lake, some three kilometers from Chaun Bay. ... But the days passed, weeks - bears on the lake El'gygytgyn was not, although in the past it has been a favorite place for their camping grounds. And only at the end of summer, bad weather Chukchi geologists who have returned from the upper Anyuya, reported seeing one of the ridges wandering huge bear very light, almost white color.

Polar bear wander hundreds of miles from the coast of the Arctic Ocean could not ... I did not say that this could be the one I am looking for - a terrible, lonely, perishing of hunger, because all life has gone in the summer here. I decided myself to go on these trails.

But then the storm is firmly established and ever ... First, I selected to search for, appeared extremely unfortunate. "

Such is a brief summary of the first and second books essay "The Very Big Bear" (Around the World. 1968. № 1-2).

Notebook third

Gone is the incredible depth of the fish El'gygytgyn, the winter winds began many months of the match in the mountain valleys and on the gravelly plains around the lake began to whistle drifting snow. It was probably about such places Tyutchev wrote: "... And drives exuberant whirlwind, knowing no rest, dust the snow along the coast of troubled ...

But, beginning with "troubled banks", the history of searches summer of 1967 does not end there. Even before the expedition, I asked some people who could shed light on the problem of interest to me. 
 
Home waiting for me three letters. Canada has responded Farley Mouet. From the old Cossack village on the River Anadyr Markovo sent a letter to the huntsman, hunter with a thirty-year experience and safecracker Viktor Gunchenko. Dr. Bernard Eyvelmans in Paris, too, received my letter and kindly sent a lengthy reply.



It is time to survey the accumulated information at the desk when emotional factors like the campfire from the polar birch trees or knocking stones in quiet mountain valleys are absent. Common human prejudice says that emotions interfere with objective analysis. The pyramid was built something like this reasoning.



A. The foundation of all history were the rumors, rare news and evidence of the existence of bears disproportionately large quantities in the North-East Asia and adjacent areas of North America.



On these rumors and news can be a known propensity to give up skepticism, if not for the existence of a giant Kodiak bear, and usually bear weighs about 300 kg, large - 500 huge, like a grizzly - to 700, but the bear, delivered in Berlin Zoo from Kodiak Island, weighed 1200 kilograms.



And no less important fact is the complete agreement of legends about the big bear among the two groups, separated by a wide strait: the Eskimos of Alaska and the mainland at the Shepherds of Chukotka.



The primary hypothesis, which I believe still on Wrangel Island, where my own eyes have seen a polar bear enormous dimensions, was the fact that the Bears just might be an underlying abnormally large size. There is no reason to talk about the existence of a special kind of giant these animals.



Due to the decrease in the total number of bears under the laws of statistics should decrease the number of large individuals. And I became interested in what also bears, "biwa" in the olden days, for example, in Eastern Siberia. Here is what informs the diligent researcher, a hunter and a writer, a mining engineer Aleksandr Cherkasov, who lived in the Trans-Baikal in the middle of the XIX century:



"... It should be noted that in Siberia bears reach the terrible magnitude. I have seen on one of the stations of the Krasnoyarsk province skin has just killed a bear in length from nose to tail with a little over 20 quarters, skin is in 18 or 19 quarters in the Trans-Baikal region are not uncommon ... "Given that the Russian quarter is 17 centimeters, the initial hypothesis received solid reinforcement.

But Viktor Gunchenko told me: "I live in a Markov 1932. Personally, he killed 16 bears, among them the larger 250-350 kg were not. I know the local hunter-safecracker, dobyvshih to 40 bears.



One of them, Mirnovsky, who died in 1965, said that the huge bear he is not producing, but shot in 1962, an old male weighing about 500 kilograms. For many years I worked as a designated recipient of furs, and through my hands passed a lot of skins. I think that within the Anadyr area (located south of the lake area El'gygytgyn. - OK) bears huge, not to extract ... "


Of course, the evidence VA Gunchenko applies only to the Anadyr region, namely, it was a center of Cossack colonization of Chukotka since the middle of XVII century. Nevertheless, the hypothesis of local over-age bears get a solid crack to the hunters have their own channels of information, and in the case of extraction of an unusually large bear Gunchenko, living without a break in the Chukotka region, would know about it. 
 
B. Hence, we can talk rather than on the Asian bears, and about some other exotic (and perhaps relic?) Living in the desert places and meet so rarely that the hunters before them, have not got. By the way, the shepherds talked not just about great, and "special", "horrible" bear. "Special" can be attributed to an unusual appearance - such as color, - "terrible" can be explained by the size and aggressiveness.



The largest bear known to science is a grizzly. Could some small number of grizzly bears get into or occasionally exposed to Chukotka? Staunch supporter of this hypothesis appears in a letter Farley Mouet.



"It seems to me - he writes - that your giant bear may be a relative of the North American grizzly bear, which, as you know, the biggest in the world ... because they live far from the Bering Strait, it is possible that in the past they might have migrated to Siberia.



Traces of 'them are immense, and even on the trail you can see that this beast twice larger than usual. Reports of meetings with giant bears in the Chukotka region, I think quite likely. It is possible that we are talking about the bears, who drifted on ice floes across the Bering Strait and crossed it on foot in a particularly harsh winter. I say this because the Alaskan grizzly bears - the great nomad ... "

It is difficult to judge whether the land a grizzly drift on the ice. But cross the frozen 70-mile strait to him, probably not very difficult. Then it is understandable surprise people who met "mysterious bears - grizzly look is unusual for shepherds of Chukotka. That explains why it occurs so rarely.



This newcomer is fast disappearing, because biological reproduction, even in conditions suitable for life requires a certain (and quite under the laws of biology), the number of individuals of both sexes. But the same argument casts doubt on the hypothesis of an attractive conservation in the wilds of the mountain valleys bear relic of former times.



(Incidentally, in his letter to Farley Mouet with his writers could not resist the emotional debate and a guess: "... In Torngatskih mountains on the peninsula Labrador Inuit talk about another type of bear, with very long wolfish teeth. Still no white man is not such a bear seen, and perhaps this is a myth.



However, descriptions of the Eskimos are very similar to the reconstruction of the Cave Bear, which is believed to have disappeared thousands of years ago. All this may serve as a faint hope that a small number of cave bears still exists today. And if so, then I looked to them precisely in the mountainous regions of Verkhoyansk, Kolyma and Anadyr ... ")



Whatever it was, there are stories about the bear that capture the imagination of shepherds in Chukotka and Eskimos in Alaska. The bear - live animal, he avoids it with noisy meetings expeditions, be it geology, topography, ethnographers, especially because all these people are just guests in polar and mountain tundra.



And if one agrees that such a bear there, then we must either accept the hypothesis accidentally wandered into Asia grizzly, or assume that there is a rare and small species of giant bears, bear-like Kodiak. This question is even more complicated, that the very classification and description of the arctic brown bears still in general are imperfect.


Several letters pages of Dr. Bernard Eyvelmansa and were devoted to this, apparently, to their situation. 
 
"At the present time - writes Bernard Eyvelmans - most scientists come to consensus about what needs to be reduced to a single species of brown bears and gray giant bears, or grizzly, Eurasia and North America, which would be subdivided, therefore, on numerous subspecies.



... The most sensible and most correct would be considered as brown bears, giants, an extreme form of variation of a grizzly ... "




Source: Warsaw (thank you for the follow up, nice find). Reply