Animal Legends and Lore

[brotherbear]

Animal facts and feats by Gerald L. Wood.
Dr. Sten Bergman ( 1936 ) of the State Museum of Natural History, Stockholm, Sweden, has described a giant variety of Kamchatka bear ( Ursus arctos piscator ) from the southern part of the peninsula, which he says exceeds even the Kodiak and Peninsula giant bears in size. He writes: "In the autumn of 1920 I was shown in Ust-Kamchatsk a pelt which far surpassed in size every other bear-skin I have ever seen. It was perfectly black and short-haired. It is asserted generally by the hunters that the very largest bears always are quite black. Besides this they always are short-haired, in contrast to the animals of normal proportions, which in general are very long-haired. Malaise has told me that on one occasion he saw the skull of a gigantic bear of the black kind; its teeth were perfect, and hence it could not have been that of an aged individual and photographed a bear's foot-print that was 37 cm ( 14.5 inches ) long and 25 cm ( 10 inches ) broad, so that the animal must have been a veritable giant. There is much, then, that speaks for the existence in Kamchatka of a quite black, gigantic bear, in addition to the ordinary brown type; but this question must remain an open one ..." Reply