Russian Brown Bears

[brotherbear]

The following pages marked 'Quote' are quotes from my book, 'Realms of the Russian Bear' by John Sparks. This covers more than only the Ussuri brown bear ( black grizzly ). This book is the 'Companion to the public television series; published in 1992.
Quote: The Great Russia Bear ... From time immemorial, the Russians have regarded the Brown Bear with a mixture of awe and endearment. Whereas its might and unpredictable temper have led people to respect it, its sad hazel eyes and the tender affection shown by the mother bear towards her cubs have made this burly, flat-footed creature one of the most popular animals in the Commonwealth of Independent States. The Russian word for the Brown Bear is 'medved', referring to its legendary love of honey, but in the many folk tales in which it features, it is given nicknames such as the male name Misha, Mishka ( an affectionate diminutive ) or Koslapy ( referring to its turned-in toes ). Though clearly strong, Misha is often a touch lazy and often outwitted by the wicked wolf or by Lisa Patrikeyevna, the cunning fox.

If taken as cubs, bears are easily tamed, and many are still pressed into service in city circuses, where they are often dressed up and made to dance, ride bicycles and juggle. Sadly, despite the love that the Russian people have for these great shaggy mammals, large numbers are killed by hunters, even during the winter, when their lairs are found with the help of courageous laika dogs; when the sleepy occupants emerge, they are shot.

Bears need space, preferring thick woodland with a mixture of coniferous and deciduous trees, and the territory of the former Soviet Union can still provide of both. Nevertheless, they occur from the tundra's southern boundary to the great mountain ranges of the south, and from the forests bordering the Baltic Sea to the shores of the Pacific. What was the Soviet Union could justifiably be called the 'Realms of the Russian Bear'. The only regions that do not contain bears are the dry steppes and the deserts of Central Asia. Reply

[brotherbear]

Quote: Russian zoologists reckon there are about 80,000 Brown Bears between the Baltic and Pacific coasts. About a quarter of them are found west of the Ural Mountains. However, bears feel most at ease in Siberia and the far east of Russia, where people are relatively scarce. An estimated 15,000 live in the Kransnoyarsk region, 8,000 in the Amur-Ussuri area, and about 9,000 on the Kamchatkan Peninsula.

The minimum size of forest suitable for Brown Bears is about 100 sq km ( 40 sq miles ), free from logging or other forms of human disturbance. In such an ideal situation, bears can survive at a density of three to every 10 sq km ( three to every 4 sq miles ). However, even in Russia, completely undisturbed virgin forest is a rarity, so bears are usually much less densely distributed. Reply

[brotherbear]

Quote: Brown Bears return to their dens during winter and consume internal stores of fat equivalent to one third their body weight, which they laid down during the previous autumn by eating huge quantities of berries and other nutritious foods. Some individuals, either through sickness or lack of good food supplies, may fail to accumulate sufficient fat. These miserable shatuny or 'wanderers', roam the forests throughout the winter looking for food, and their irritable nature may cause them to charge and attack people. Sometimes, a bear becomes a shatun when it is disturbed by, and escapes from, hunters, because it is then unable to settle down again. Reply

[brotherbear]

Quote: Bear Breeding: The baby bears are born in January when the mothers are dozing inside their snug dens. Females breeding for the first time often deliver only a single cub, but their subsequent litters usually include two, and there may even be three, rarely four, and exceptionally five. However, most she-bears give birth only every other year, although their fertility depends somewhat on the abundance of food. Up to a third of them may breed only once every three years.

The cubs are blind at first and at a weight of only 500-700 g ( 18-25 oz ) are very small in comparison to their mother's great bulk of around 150 kg ( 330 lb ): weight for weight, they are less than one-tenth the size of a human baby. This has survival value because the tiny creatures do not tax their mother's energy resources at a time when she must rely entirely on her body fat. But once they come out into the open, the cubs' initial chances of survival are not high. During the first year, 65% of them die, and 57% of those that live to experience their first birthday succumb before their second.

However, the fortunate cubs stay with their mother at first, sometimes for two summers, sleeping with her in her den during the winter along with their younger brothers and sisters. If the female breeds every year, she may have three generations of cubs in tow, with the eldest looking after the youngest ones - in Russian, they are called pestuny, which means 'nurses'.

Inevitably, when the offspring become sexually mature, the mother chases them away, and the females accept males during the midsummer rutting period. Whereas female bears reach their full stature when they are five years old, the males continue to grow until they are ten. Once adult, Brown Bears have few enemies except man, with a natural mortality rate of only 5% ( although the mortality rates are obviously higher in areas where the bears are hunted ). This means that some may enjoy the prospect of a long life of up to 47 years, although 30 is a more likely maximum. Reply

[brotherbear]

Quote: Variations on a Theme

The Brown Bear is a circumpolar species, mostly associated with the taiga, which itself girdles the northern hemisphere. Those from North America are traditionally known by the name given to them by the pioneering settlers, who called them 'Grizzlies' because of the silvery, or 'grizzled', tips to their hairs.

Brown Bears are extremely variable, occurring in all sizes and in several coat colours. These characteristics were once used as the basis for differentiating a plethora of species - with some justification. For instance, there is a tenfold weight difference between the Syrian Brown Bear - the kind usually seen in zoos - which tips the scales at 68 kg ( 150 pounds ), and a real bruiser from Alaska, rearing up to 3 m ( 10 ft ) tall and weighing half a ton or more! Nevertheless, contemporary zoological wisdom divines that they are all variations on the same theme, no matter where they live, and that they all belong to one and the same species - Ursus arctos. Reply

[brotherbear]

Quote: Being large and omnivorous, with a taste for flesh should the opportunity arise, bears have never been thick on the ground, except when a glut of food causes temporary gatherings. However, Brown Bears are nowhere near as widespread as they used to be. Once, bears roamed throughout the North American and Eurasian forests, and they even inhabited the British wildwood during the Dark Ages. But bears and people do not comfortably share the same living space, and so over the centuries these great creatures have been forced to retreat as their haunts were whittled away by the implacable advance of human civilization.

Today, healthy populations of Grizzlies exist only in Alaska, Canada, and Yellowstone National Park. As far as the Eurasian race is concerned, although there are a few bears in Spain, Italy, and Scandinavia, the largest population by far occurs in Russia, thanks to its vast tracts of virgin forest. Here the Brown Bear is found at low densities throughout the taiga and other forests.

In the eastern part of Siberia and in Kamchatka, the bears supplement their diet of fresh grass and berries with oil-rich salmon upon which they gorge themselves during the fishes' spawning runs. Accordingly, the bears prosper and some grow into magnificent specimens that rival the giant Grizzlies that live in Alaska.

Two separate and distinctive populations of Brown Bears are found in both the Caucasus Mountains and the mountains of the Central Asian republics. In the seclusion of the forests that clothe the slopes of the Caucasus, a few bears of the small Syrian race survive, and in the Pamir and Tien Shan mountains in Central Asia, the population consists of shaggy, fawn coated individuals. These 'Isabelline' bears also possess long, pale claws from which they derive their name - bielokogotny medved, 'the white-clawed bear'. Reply

[brotherbear]

Quote: Steppes and Deserts

South and east of the great forests, where the climate is less wet, the trees lose their dominance over the landscape in favour of perennial grasses. This results in another quintessentially Russia habitat - the rolling steppe. The transition is gradual, and on the northern fringes, there is a zone of 'wooded steppe', called because of the presence of a scattering of trees, especially along the water courses, where their roots can tap into moisture. The true steppes are completely open to the sky and are equivalent to the pampas and prairies of America, and the east African savannahs. In Eurasia, they run from the Danube delta in Romania, across the north of the Black and Caspian Seas, through northern Kazakhstan and into Manchuria. To the south, where rainfall is even more meager, they merge into the semi-arid zones and baking hot deserts of Central Asia.

Quote: Land of Contrasts

But the Commonwealth of Independent States is not only a land of tundra, taiga, steppes and deserts. It includes great areas of the Arctic Ocean, and a huge total area of wetlands - probably greater than those of any other country. On the edge of the Pacific, the Kamchatka Peninsula hangs like a scimitar from the far eastern end of the continent. It is born of fire, with 29 active volcanoes looming into the sky. This is also the hunting ground for the biggest of Russian bears.

Brown Bears are found looking for food on the shores of the greatest and deepest freshwater lake in the world - Lake Baikal - which sits in southern Siberia and contains enough water to supply the world's needs for nearly half a century. Likewise, the world's biggest inland seas are situated in the Commonwealth of Independent States, and the greatest of all of these, the Caspian, is the subject of the next stage of this safari. Reply

[brotherbear]

Quote: Mountain Bears - The Soviet 'Yetis' ?

The Tien Shan and Pamir mountains are inhabited by the white-clawed race of the Brown Bear. In fact, only animals with really straw-coloured fur possess pale claws; the darker, grey-brown individuals grow normal horn-coloured ones. These Central Asian bears reach a good size, the male's body measuring about 1.5 m ( 5 ft ) long and weighing up to 200 kg ( 440 pounds ), although the females are smaller. During May, they emerge from their dens after their long winter's sleep, the females accompanied by their cubs, to feed on fresh grass, juicy wild rhubarb, Cow Parsnip and giant fennel, as well as on the remains of berries and fruit left over from the previous autumn.

As the weather improves and summer reaches the higher ridges, the bears climb to about 3,000 m ( 10,000 ft ) to graze on vegetation and dig out mice, voles, susliks and even the large marmots. Being big and muscular, they can heave up rocks and even turn over boulders in their quest for small mammals, molluscs and large insects. Even carrion is eagerly consumed. Stomping through the elevated snowfields, they often leave surprisingly human-like footprints which may be the source of local Yeti legends. The rear footprints of porcupines, too, can look remarkably like a human's. For this reason, some mountain people will eat neither animal. Reply

[brotherbear]

Quote: The Brown Bears also leave the high, alpine meadows and retire to the forest and thickets, where they feast on hawthorn berries, oil-rich walnuts and wild apples in preparation for their long winter lie-in.

Quote: Turning to the other end of the mammalian size scale, Brown Bears are big enough to carry large amounts of fat and barely need to hibernate properly. During autumn, they gorge themselves on the fruits of the forest - the wild strawberries, bilberries and other delicious berries that ripen at this time of year. By the time winter arrives, they are corpulent and have settled down in dens located beneath fallen trees or in the shelter of rocks - or sometimes in open places in the forest, where they build a nest-like mound of moss and other vegetation. Here, they become drowsy and sleep away the cold months for 75-195 days, depending on the region.

The bear's slumber is not true hibernation. While sleeping, their body temperature falls only slightly to 34 degrees Celsius ( 93 degress Fahrenheit ), with a consequential saving on energy reserves. However, they are tolerably alert and, if woken, are capable of bursting out of their hiding place fit to fight or flee. Nevertheless, their body chemistry does change subtly. Somehow, it seems, they are able to suppress their protein metabolism. Normally, when these compounds are broken down, urea and other nitrogenous waste are produced, and these need to be flushed out of the bloodstream by the kidneys. The change is not due simply to enforced starvation because bears prevented from feeding during the summer produce plenty of urea. But during the winter, a sleepy bear produces virtually none.

Like Polar Bears, female Brown Bears give birth to rat-sized cubs around Christmas when most of the dens are covered with a thick layer of snow. They both produce a single tiny offspring for the same reason. As bears cannot feed in the depths of winter, the cubs enter the world small enough so as not to tax the internal resources of their mothers, who have to suckle them for several months before they can go foraging. Reply

[brotherbear]

Quote: The swarming hordes of caddis entice Brown Bears out of the woods. After waking up, they forage around in the forest looking for freshly germinated herbs and berries that have survived the winter, and pine nuts left over from caches made by chipmunks. Now, the caddis flies give them a welcome bonus of insect protein. During the evenings, the bears - many of them females with small cubs in attendance - wander along the water's edge, deftly turning over stones with their great forepaws and quickly licking up the insects clinging to them. When they have eaten their fill, the sated bears shuffle off into the forest until the following day.

The spawning salmon provide a bonanza of nutrients, derived from the sea, which helps to nourish the animal and plant communities that live on Kamchatka's raw volcanic soil. Even in death, salmon bequeath the goodness in their exhausted bodies to the rivers in which they breed. The flush of fertilizing minerals from the putrefying fish stimulates the growth of aquatic invertebrates on which the newly hatched salmon depend. The dead and dying fish are also consumed by terrestrial animals - indeed, they are crucial to their survival during the winter. Large numbers of Northern Ravens and Slaty-backed Gulls assemble to peck at the carcasses. They are joined by some of Russia's - and the world's - biggest Brown Bears. About 9,000 of these great bears live on Kamchatka; when rearing up on their hind legs, the largest males stand nearly 3 m ( 9 feet ) tall and weigh up to 800 kg ( 1500 pounds ), rivaling their equally well-fed cousins, the Grizzly Bears of Kodiak Island, Alaska.

The Kamchatka peninsula is one of the richest realms for these outsized Brown Bears, with a profision of wild berries and oil-rich salmon available just before they settle down for their winter's sleep. When putting on fat at this time of the year, a hungry Kamchatka bear can eat up to 20,000 berries or nearly 50 kg ( 110 pounds ) of fish in a day. In Alaska, Grizzly Bears often gather in impressive groups to feast on the glut of fish, but in Kamchatka, the bears appear to keep their distance from each other, tolerating only other scavengers, such as Stellar Sea Eagle. Reply

[brotherbear]

Brown Bear ( Ursus arctos ) from the book "Notes of an East Siberian Hunter" by A.A. Cherkassov and translated by Vladimir Beregovoy and Stephen Bodio - 1865.

I begin my account of mammals with the bear, who certainly holds first place among our predators because of his enormous strength and boldness, and the difficulty of hunting him. All other animals are afraid of the bear, except for the moose and the wild boar. Even they occasionally become his prey. How many hunters have killed a bear? Of course, very few, compared to the total number of people who claim to be hunters. It is not because the number of bears has declined, or because they are difficult to find; it is not so! Here, fear plays the most important role... I knew many hunters who were excellent marksmen but who did not like spring hunting, even for hazel hens, because they were afraid of meeting a bear. Of course, nobody admits this. However, a Siberian promyshlennik is constantly in the forest, and he doesn't worry about bears! To the contrary, he is always seeking a chance to find one. However, "it is a small flock that has no black sheep". There are Siberian promyshleniks who hunt only because they are poor, and these hunters are very afraid of meeting bears. As usual, they hope "God will save us!" Reply

[brotherbear]

There are two breeds of bears in forests of East Siberia: the "ant eater" bear ( muraveinik ), which is smaller and the "carrion eater" bear ( stervyatnik ), which is bigger. Strictly speaking, this division is not precise, because both kinds of bears are great lovers of ant nests, and neither will ever miss a chance to eat carrion, especially the meat of freshly-killed animals. The major difference between them is in their size. This is the only way that Siberian hunters distinguish them, and only a few of them use the words muraveinik and stervyatnik.
What names bears are called in Transbaikalia! Some Russians in conversation call the bear "master" ( khozyain ), others call it taptygin, still others call it "in-toed Mishka" or "shaggy devil"; some, carried away with their stories, call it "the dark sickness". and all these nicknames became so well-known that they do not need any explanation. Siberians also call the bear "black beast" or just "beast." In the Tungus language the bear is called kara gurosu, which also means "black beast"; Siberians probably learned this term from the Tungus along with many other words. Orochons call a bear chepchekun, and some of them also call it cheldon. It is strange that Orochons named the bear cheldon, because in Siberia exiled and persecuted people are also called cheldon. Everyone is familiar with the gait of the bear, and therefore, a fat and clumsy man would be called toptygin or "in-toed Mishka." I should say that in Siberia bears may be very big. I once saw a bearskin from a recently killed bear at a station in Krasnoyarsk Province. It was 20 chetverts long from nose to tail. In Transbaikalia, bear skins 18 and 19 chetverts long are not rare. The skins of local bears are considerably better than the skins of bears killed in the European part of Russia. They have fuzzier, softer, longer hair. Bearskins with brown-red color, which I have seen in Russia, are not seen here. In the smaller breed, the bear's coat can be almost black, with silver hairs along the backbone; in the larger breed the bear's coat is always more of a brown color. Bears with white "shirtfront" also occur. Local promyshlenniks say that they are the worst and most dangerous. They say that such bears came from mixes of the knyazek with regular bears. Reply

[brotherbear]

The smell of a bear is so strong that dogs can smell it at a distance of a few dozen yards, and it is hard to ride a horse over a bear's tracks. I cannot determine the longevity of the bear, but I suppose that it can live for many years. G. Brehm reports that, in captivity, bears have lived up to 50 years, and one 31 year-old female gave birth to young. In 1885, near the Shilka factory in the Nerchinks Mountain District, one hunted bear was so old that he could not fight back. He was killed like a calf. His teeth and claws were completely worn out, and he did not have any fat on his carcass. This bear could not make a winter den, and instead laid between two rock ledges under a cliff, where he was killed in the fall, before the snow cover was established. His coat was very bad; its hair was reddish, thin, and hanging in mats; his skin was thin, and easily torn.

Everybody knows that bears go into hibernation in dens for the winter, where they sleep, remaining keen, until the warm season. There is a belief among some people that the bear sucks his paw while he hibernates, and this is how he gets his nourishment during the winter. I do not believe this, because I have many facts disproving it: I have never heard of a promyshlenniks that killed a bear in its den with wet paws; on the contrary, their paws were always dry and thick with dust and even dirt on the claws, which had remained there from before it went into hibernation. I would like to know how a gentleman naturalist would explain this? The majority of Siberian promyshlenniks do not believe it. Reply

[brotherbear]

The winter sleep of bears is not the same as the hibernation of many other of our animals, such as hedgehogs, frogs, bats, and marmots. A bear never becomes torpid. When in the den, the bear is only half-sleeping, and if he does not see, he hears; one proof of this is the fact that a bear will rush out of the den when the hunters are approaching, even in the middle of the most hostile cold winter, and do it before the hunter can even get ready to attack. It is beyond doubt that bears breathe when in their dens, because when it is very cold, one can see hoar-frost ( kurzhak ), formed by the bear's breath on small bushes and twigs around the entrance. When in the den, the bear "feeds" by using its own body fat which it had accumulated in the fall. A skinny, hungry bear does not go into a den, but keeps wandering in the forest and becomes a shatun.

Bears make their dens in different ways. A bear can make his den in the roots of a fallen tree, or it can dig a deep pit under boulders, rock ledges, etc. A bear can make a bed on the surface of the earth, and cover it with branches and moss. Some bears make their dens between cliffs, in cracks in the cliffs, or in caves. In every den, whenever it is made, bears make bedding out of moss ( shaikta ), make a sort of pillow for their heads, and assume a position with their heads and noses directed towards the entrance. bears choose places that are difficult to access to make their dens, such as in deep valleys, in gorges, or in protected thickets on northern slopes; they very rarely choose to den up in open places. Siberians notice that bears that make their dens in the open, for example, on the sunny side of a slope, are considerably more dangerous than bears that hibernate in well-hidden places. Therefore, when hunting such a bear you must take more precautions. Why they cannot explain, but they say so. I have never had a chance to check if this is true. Here is a case which contradicts this idea. In 1885, two boys from village "B" of Nerchinsk Mountain District were riding home through the forest from an adjacent village. They saw a squirrel on the ground, dismounted, and tried to catch it. They did not catch the squirrel, but strayed far from their horses. When walking back, one of them noticed a black hole on a sunny slope; as he explained later on, curiosity prompted him. He left his younger buddy, climbed the slope, came up to the black opening, lay down and looked into the hole. He saw two big glowing eyes there, got scared and quietly crawled away, looking back over his shoulder until he could run to the horses where his friend was waiting for him. When he came home, he told his father what had happened.

His father understood what it was. He quickly gathered his fellows and they headed to where the boy told them the black hole was. He found a den with a huge bear inside it. They killed the bear in the presence of the boy. because this happened in the fall, when the bear had not yet fallen into its dormancy, its stupidity was surprising, because the bear saw the boy peeking inside, and still did not leave the den after the boy left. This bear did not show a bear's usual caution and prudence. Reply

[brotherbear]

Bears enter their dens for hibernation in fall, around Holy Cross Day ( September 14th ). If the weather in the fall is cold and the ground is covered with snow, bears will start their hibernation even sooner. If the snow covers the ground before the bear departs to its den, he will use tricks to hide his tracks. The den is always ready before the snow covers the ground. The bear walks many times on the same track, makes loops like a hare, leaps away from his track, walks over windfalls, and only then comes to his den. At first, when it is still warm, bears lie on top of the "den." When it turns cold, they enter the den and lie with their heads straight towards the entrance, which will remain open until winter sets in. This is one reason why it is not good to hunt bears in the fall, when they are still alert in the den and its entrance open. Such bears will almost always jump out of the den well before the hunters can approach closely enough. In such a case, in the forest thickets, it is a bad idea to fight the bear. In this situation, success will depend on sheer luck. Neither speed, experience, nor skill with the gun will help. Reply