Big cat and Bear tale

[Dr Panthera]

I am going to list a brief description of the interactions of each of the big cats with sympatric bear species, generally the cats are dominant over bears of similar weight but encounters go either way:
Puma:
Sympatric with brown bears, American black bear, and Andean bear, all these scavenge from puma kills and steal them.
Generally brown bears are dominant over pumas, Andean bears rarely interact with pumas, and with black bears it goes either way, Mark Elbroch documented a three year old female puma who lost her kill to a three year old black bear and returned and killed the bear.
Jaguar:
Little overlap with both black bears and Andean bears, little scientific documentation of interactions
Lion: 
Not sympatric with bears, historically lions were sympatric with Atlas brown bears, Syrian brown bears, and cave bears in Eurasia even at those times the Bears lived in mountainous and hilly areas with little interaction with lions
Cheetah:
Not sympatric, different habitats.
Leopards: 
Sympatric with Syrian brown bears, Eurasian brown bears, Isabella brown bear, Asiatic black bear, sloth bear, sun bear, and giant panda.
Predation on panda cubs, black bear cubs, and sun bear cubs is documented, little interaction with adult bears, probably the leopard is subordinate to all of them.
Snow Leopard:
Sympatric with brown bear and asiatic black bear, predation on juveniles of bears is documented , including Heptner and Sludskii s account of the predation on a two year old brown bear.
Tiger:
Sympatric with brown bear, asiatic black bear, sloth bear, and sun bear.
Predation on these bears by tigers is well documented scientifically up to the range of female brown bears of circa 140 kg in Russia, all bear species scavenge tiger kills and in many cases dominate female and subadult tigers, large male brown bears have killed and eaten Amur tigers even adult young males, reported interactions go either way.
Black bears made 22% of Amur tigers diet in one area and brown bears were another 9%
Bengal tigers prey on sloth bears and asiatic black bears and lose kille to them
Indochinese tigers on asiatic black bears and sun bears
Malayan tigers on sun bears ( possibly asiatic black bear)
Sumatran tigers on sun bears as well.
Tiger kills are a good source of animal protein to all bears.
In most cases the cats withdraw but as I said either outcome is possible depending on the situation. Reply