Bear Strength

[brotherbear]

The way I understand it, the reason that the polar bear has a long narrow skull and elongated neck is for swimming. Polar bears are very aquatic, with webbed feet and blubber for both buoyancy and insulation. The polar bear does indeed have incredibly powerful forearms for swimming and for crushing through thick layers of ice to get to a seal.
I believe that at equal size, a brown bear has more upper-body strength with a massive head, short thick neck, and of course those massive shoulders. The polar bear has longer limbs and perhaps stronger arms. But let's face the facts. The average polar bear is bigger even than the average Kodiak bear. furthermore, Kodiaks are but a single population of the species 'Ursus arctos' while with polar bears we are looking at the entire species. A more realistic representative of the brown bears would likely be the inland grizzly such as those of Montana or Wyoming where the average fully mature male weighs roughly 500 pounds. Reply