| 1 | The hump |
One of the easiest differences to spot from a distance. Brown bears have a hump, while black bears don’t have a hump. Regardless of gender or subspecies, all brown bears have a hump. It could be the American grizzly, the Eurasian brown bear, the Tibetan blue bear, a Kodiak bear, or a Syrian brown bear (which tend to be blond), but there’ll always be a hump.
2 million years ago, brown bears decided that they needed a hump to dig for roots in hard soil, and dig out their hibernation dens on frozen mountainsides, not to mention fighting off other grizzly bears in salmon disputes. The hump itself is a tightly knotted area of muscle that blesses a brown bear’s forepaws with immense power, and a classic tell to remember is that when walking on all fours, the hump should be the highest point on a brown bear’s body.
Meanwhile, the black bear is universally hump-free. The highest point on their body is their extreme lower back, although the angles can be extremely deceptive if a bear is climbing a mountainside. Remember this saying: a raised hump for brown bears, and raised rump for black bears. Be careful, because like any muscle, the size of the hump varies in brown bears from massive to small.
| 2 | Their temperament |
1 million years ago, the American black bear shared the plains of America with sabre toothed tigers, American lions and dire wolves. Those ancient beasts are all long extinct today, but their legacy lingers on in the black bear’s shier and more reticent nature. Essentially, the aggressive genes all died out in battles with much larger predators.
Grizzly mothers are legendary for defending their cubs with a raging passion, until she’s convinced that the threat is gone – hence the old play dead strategy. However, black bears have the option of sending their cubs up a tree, which they usually take. A human male aged 18-24 is 167 times more likely to kill than a black bear. Generally, black bears much less territorial than grizzlies. Most black bear attacks are defensive, i.e. “he’s more afraid of you than you are of him”.
Starving black bears will occasionally prey on humans in wilderness areas, but they prefer smaller mammals like squirrels and carrion. Black bear attacks are actually less likely in inhabited areas where they scavenge garbage, because those bears have associated humans with plentiful free food. Who would want to spoil a free supply of pizza?
In a fight or flight setting, black bears usually default to flight. From 1900 to 1980, 23 Americans were killed by black bears, a tiny number given that 200,000 currently roam the lower 48 states.
| 3 | Their claws |
Not only are a brown bear’s claws longer, but their shape is completely different. A black bear’s claws are rounded and 1-2 inches long, enabling them to scamper up trees with incredible ease. Round claws also aid the black bear in its favourite activity, tearing into rotting stumps and tree trunks in the forest. They do this to make their hibernation dens, and to search for tasty insects like carpenter ants. Sometimes, they feed on the tree itself, shredding the outer bark to access the tasty inner sapwood.
Another black bear trick is frilling, when they peel strips of bark upwards from the bottom of the tree to leave it bare. Using its claws, a black bear can shred up to 70 trees in one day. In fact, the mayhem which black bears gleefully unleash on trees is a significant difference to grizzlies itself.
Finally, black bear claws are consistently dark-coloured. Grizzly bears sometimes have dark claws, but the colour varies vastly, all the way to pale. A brown bear’s claws are only slightly curved, and average at 3-5 inches long. This increases their hunting (AKA mauling) abilities, but weakens their tree climbing abilities. Grizzly claws have the advantage when digging in hard frozen earth, to search for roots in their isolated mountainous terrain. The main similarity is that both species have non-retractable claws, like polar bears, but unlike a Bengal tiger.
| 4 | The pawprint |
These claws differences also affect the paw print. If your helicopter ever crashes in the wilderness (because movies are a 100% accurate portrayal of reality) and your heart sinks as you stumble across pawprints, then the ones with claws closer to the foot are a black bear’s. Claws further away indicate a brown bear, and the individual toe prints are usually more separated with a black bear, and almost touching with a grizzly.
The pad of a black bear is also more rounded than a grizzly bear’s, which is more square. If you take a ruler, it’s possible to put a clear line between the toes and pad of a grizzly bear footprint, but this is impossible with a black bear’s.
To keep hikers safe, the National Parks have invented the Palmisciano System. A hiker must draw a mental line betwen the lowest point of the big toe and the top of the main footpad. Extend this line all the way to the right. If the little toe falls above the line (more in line with the big toe), you’re about to make friends with a grizzly. If below, it’s a black bear. Essentially, a grizzly bear’s toes are more straight and ordered, whereas a black bear’s sweep downwards as they get smaller.
| 5 | Their size |
It isn’t a foolproof system, because the biggest, fattest and cuddliest black bear can easily be larger than a starving brown one with no fish. However, the average brown bear is visibly bigger and heavier than a black bear, from a distance and up close. Grizzly bears weigh 400 to 800 pounds, with females clocking in at 250-500. Black bears cannot compete with this size no matter what they do, with males averaging at 150-500 pounds and the females being barely heavier than humans, at 100 to 300 pounds.
Height is a similar story. Black bears stand 6-9 feet tall on their hind legs, and 5 feet at the shoulder. Male black bears achieve 5-7 feet and 3 feet respectively. Kodiak Island is a whole other story, where the males average at 800-1200 pounds and loom over all challengers at 9 feet tall. A black bear that washed up there would probably take one look and turn around instantly, unless he was an emissary of goodwill and alliance between the different species.
Don’t get too confident though. Again, huge black bears do exist. Brown coloured black bears exist, and so do big, bushy coats which make identifying a hump annoyingly difficult. If all three factors combine, it can make the species a surprisingly hard call. The odds of this misidentification happening and leading to your death have to be astronomically low, maybe 1 in a million, but some National Parks now warn against using size as an identifying feature.
| 6 | Their facial profile |
From below the ears, a black bear’s face angles sharply downwards all the way to the snout. Black bears look more dog-like, and their eyes are set further apart. Grizzly bears, meanwhile, have a clear angle change between the snout and nose. Travelling up a grizzly’s snout is like a moderately steep hillside that ends in a sudden cliff when you reach the forehead. This is known as a concave or dish-shaped face. Grizzly eyes are closer together as well, and deeper set.
At a glance, a black bear’s face tends to look longer than the rounded face of a grizzly. The ears are another obvious tell, as a grizzly’s tend to be small, in contrast to almost everything else. They’re also furrier, while a black bear’s ears are much more prominent and rounded, and much more solid looking overall.
Things can get deceptive though: a high wind that fluffs up a black bear’s fur can make their eyes less prominent. A brown bear fresh from swimming in an Alaskan lake can have more prominent ears, because its fur will be matted down. The best place to check all this is from your trusty pair of binoculars, binoculars which don’t normally have plans to eat you.
| 7 | Their diet |
Black and grizzly bears have closer dietary preferences than you might think. Most of the classic differences are created by circumstances. For example, the black bear has a reputation as a pizza-guzzling garbage rummager, but this is mainly because of its closer proximity to human settlements, with 200,000 living in the lower 48 states compared to 1700 grizzlies. In Glacier National Park, the garbage management was very poor until 1967 when two women were attacked, and the grizzlies there used to rustle with a passion.
Brown bears are slightly more carnivorous than black bears, as they tend to hunt larger prey like elk, moose and sheep, but black bears also hunt small mammals, including lamb, squirrels, beavers, mice and foxes. Their limitations are mostly due to their smaller size rather than innate preferences.
Officially, both bear species are omnivores, and their long distance senses of smell are equally excellent. Black bears even get in on the salmon-guzzling action, as evidenced by this youtube video, despite steep competition with grizzlies. Both species fatten up for the winter with endless amounts of berries, including buffaloberries in their prime Alaskan turf.
The biggest difference to grizzlies is the black bear’s fondness for insects, particularly ants hiding in rotten tree stumps. But Slovenian brown bears also have huge ant-hoovering tendencies – black bears are just more consistent. Yellowstone’s brown bears go wild for army cutworm moths.
| 8 | Their hibernation strategies |
Black bears and brown bears have many similarities in hibernation. Both eat nothing over 3-5 months in their den, living solely off body fat accumulated during the long summer of feeding. Their heart rates falls as low as 1 beat per 45 minutes, and both will awaken only occasionally. Both black bears and grizzlies can stay active in the winter if the weather allows, like the black bear colonies in Mexico or the surprisingly warm Kodiak Island.
The difference is location. Black bears hibernate inside dead tree logs, or even on top of trees, somehow keeping their balance. In Alaska, black bears sometimes climb to the top of hollowed out tree stumps, and jump down into the centre, which is only made possible by their smaller size and superior tree climbing skills. In the central USA, black bears will sometimes hibernate beneath roads and house porches.
Grizzlies also use masses of fallen logs sometimes, but much prefer caves and self-made dens dug on the side of remote mountains. They often rip apart vegetation and use it to insulate the entrances and floors of these secret hidey-holes, for a precious couple of degrees of bonus warmth. Brown bears dig a new den every year, but tend to return to roughly the same locations – if it aint broke, don’t fix it.
A black bear never has to consider any of this, because their claws aren’t equipped for digging dens.
| 9 | Their habitat |
Black bears are creatures of the forest, particularly moderately thick forests with plentiful streams and rivers for clean, fresh drinking water. Biodiversity is a must, with numerous plant species bearing fruits and nuts, along with modest forest clearings to allow shrub growth.
Thick trees of at least 20 inches are vital, to give the black bears a refuge for their cubs to climb into. They also require dead trees to manipulate in winter and create their cosy hibernation dens. These conditions are met by forests all over the USA, and consequently, there’s only 9 states with no confirmed black bears: Hawaii, Illinois, Delaware, North and South Dakota, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, and Indiana.
Brown bears are generally creatures of more open landscapes. They evolved not in the arctic, but subarctic steppe country. They like forests, but are perfectly at home in grassy foothills, steep mountainsides, and wide snowy plains. Put it this way: a grizzly bear is about ten times more likely to meet a polar bear than a black bear. Brown bears venture much further north into Canada, with the prize being tasty whale carcasses.
That said, an epic meeting was observed in 2018 in Wapusk, west of Hudson Bay – a polar bear, brown bear, and black bear crossing paths for the first time in recorded scientific history.
| 10 | Climbing skills |
Thanks to their 2 inch rounded claws, black bears have the superpower of running up trees without even batting an eyelid. They’re the opposite to humans: amazing at climbing trees, yet clumsy at climbing ladders. How many times have you examined a tree in the park, looking for the most perfectly spaced branches to climb? With black bears, a straight, featureless trunk is no problem – all they need is bark to sink their claws into.
Most black bear cubs seem to be having the time of their lives when climbing trees, ascending the highest branches for no logical reason other than fun. There’s a dark side though: black bears sometimes kill their prey by throwing them off. Unlike squirrels, they descend trees with their hind legs first rather than facing down.
As for grizzlies, the old wives tales recommend climbing trees for survival, as grizzlies are unable to. The truth is that grizzlies can climb trees, but tend to be clumsier than their black bear cousins. A grizzly mother might send its cubs up a tree to save them from a marauding male, but generally, brown bears have no special love for trees: they’re just a tool.
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