The caving techniques of 1924 were light years away from now. Instead of a high powered torch embedded in a helmet, the most famous cavers like Norbert Casteret could hope for was a match which they prayed wouldn’t be extinguished by a falling drop of water.

When Casteret told the villagers of Montespan about a local cave he planned to explore in January 1923, they laughed and said “you’ll never get out alive again”. Indeed, when Casteret arrived, he found that halfway through, a river rose to meet the roof. He knew that he could drown, but Casteret had buckets of enthusiasm, and down he went. Miraculously, the flooded section did surface again, but the chamber was pitch black, and the water was already rising. One year later, Casteret returned to Montespan cave for round 2, this time with his assistant Henri Goodin. They breached the flooded passage, and reached Casteret’s old furthest point, before finding a new passage leading to an entirely new cave. Inside, they discovered a hall of cave paintings, including bears and horses.

But the most amazing discovery of all was a life size stone carving of a bear, with one caveat – it was missing its head. The body was embedded with spear marks, like a primitive ritual had been conducted. Casteret was amazed – risking his life had been worth it.

The plot thickened when the duo found a real bear skull between the forepaws of this sculpture. Casteret had some rudimentary archaeological knowledge, and estimated that it was 20,000 years old.

Casteret then summoned experts, and left the bear head in place while he and Godin dug a small channel to relieve the cave’s constant flooding. When he returned to the skull, it was gone! The bear chamber itself was unaffected by the rising river, so theft was the only explanation – or something more ancient, more superstitious.

Some bear remains are unearthed in mere minutes, but this skeleton took a full 12 years to fully retrieve. The Scottish hamlet of Inchnadamph is famous for its “bones cave”, with the entrance located at the foot of a high mountainside cliff. Discoveries include lynx bones, human skeletons, and the only confirmed evidence of polar bears on British soil.

Most importantly, the cave is home to Uamh an Claonaite, the longest cave passage in Scotland (measuring 1.782 miles), and it was here that professional cavers discovered an ancient brown bear bone back in 1995. Archaeologists declared it to be 11,000 years old, having perished while in hibernation. But where was the rest of the skeleton? From 1995 to 2008, cavers worked flat out to excavate new tunnels, shifting soil and crawling through tiny passages to reveal entire new chambers.

Since Uamh an Claonaite is a dry cave system, there was only a minimal risk of flooding and drowning. Gradually, the team found the bear’s skull, its lower mandible, its vertebra, and its ribs. A few pelvis, foot and limb bones were discovered as well, with the end result that 70-80% of the prehistoric bear’s skeleton was completed. Analysis confirmed it to be a brown bear, rather than a cave bear.

Clearly, centuries of rainwater had gradually washed the bear’s bones down to the lower passages. It was probably an elderly bear who had entered a higher cave entrance in the system, but been too thin to survive the long, cold winter.   

Without a dog escaping from its owner, this ancient bear cave could have still been a secret today. In 1943, Jacko McGann was chasing after his pooch in western Ireland, when he spotted a narrow slit in the rocky slopes of Ailwee hill. He explored the cave, but for some reason forget to tell professional cavers about it until 1973. The cavers rushed there instantly, and soon discovered a lengthy passageway, which was initially blocked by boulder fall approximately 230 metres down, but eventually turned out to be 1km long.

Ailwee cave boasts a large underground river, rock formations galore, and three main chambers: Mud Hall, the Cascade Chamber, and Bear Haven. Can you guess what the latter contained? A large brown bear skull, dating back 10,4000 years. Ireland isn’t known for its bear fossils, and it was once doubted whether brown bears had ever lived there, but Ailwee cave has a grand total of 450 bear bones among 15,000 total bones.

In 2006, archaeologists were shocked when a tibia was dated back to 46000 years ago, proving that multiple bears had inhabited the cave. Cuts on the bones proved that ancient hunter gatherers had sliced meat from the carcasses. One thing’s for certain – these guys didn’t expect their handiwork to be stumbled upon 4600 years later.

Tour guides love to tell visitors that Ailwee cave was the last ever bear den to exist in Ireland. Are they correct? Nobody knows.

Many centuries ago, a prehistoric hunter crept up a steep mountainside in the Swiss Jura, draped in luxurious animal fur. He was stalking a female bear, which his tribe had spotted roaming the wilderness over the last few days. Now, he finally had his prey in his sites, and raising his spear, he threw the most accurate shot his arm could manage. His aim was true – the flint drove into the bear’s spine, causing it to yelp in pain and vanish into a nearby cave.

The hunter wasn’t sure that the bear was truly injured, and not wanting to lose his prize, he deployed a trick he knew well, sparking up a fire to smoke the bear out of its hiding place. But the hunter made one fatal mistake. He crept too close to the cave, and suddenly, the dying bear propelled itself from the darkness, in a final bid for revenge. It collided with the hunter, knocked him to the floor, and before he could cry for help, the hunter was being mauled. Hours later, both man and beast were dead.

For 10,000 years, man and bear lay undiscovered in the heart of the Jura mountains. Until 1956 that is, when a clean cut Westerner found the ancient hunter and bear’s skeletons, still intermingled approximately 15 metres from the cave’s entrance.

At first, the skeletons were a complete mystery, but the discovery of a flint still embedded in the bear’s 3rd vertebrae changed everything, as did charcoal from the fire and 9 other ancient arrowheads strewn around. Both skeletons were dated back to 13,600 years ago, and the skull shape proved that it was a female brown bear, rather than an extinct cave bear.

Today, the cave is a renowned archaeological site, and its name is Grotte Du Bichon. The entrance is at 846 metres in altitude and lies 5 miles north of the Swiss city of La Chaux-de-Fonds.

Another cave discovered by an adventurous stray dog, which vanished down a supposed foxhole in the rugged Yorkshire countryside back in 1837. When 24 year old Michael Horner crawled in after it, he emerged minutes later with his arms full of archaeological artefacts, including multiple ancient coins. One particularly eye catching discovery was a giant bear skull.

The distinctive jaw and forehead shape proved it to be a brown bear rather than a cave bear, and its age was estimated at 14,100 years. Archaeological excavation showed that the mother bear died soon after childbirth, and that the cave was mostly the haunt of adult and juvenile bears.

For once, the skull wasn’t stolen or lost – it currently lives in the Tot Lord collection of Yorkshire. While human remains were also found, including a harpoon made from a reindeer antler, there’s no sign of cutwork on the bear’s skull, hinting that it wandered into the cool, damp cave naturally. The most shocking fossil of all was a hippopotamus, dating back 140,000 years.

Over time, fossil evidence for 7 bears was discovered in Victoria cave, mostly from before the Holocene period that started 11,650 years ago. It’s believed that Yorkshire was one of Britain’s main prehistoric brown bear hubs. The cave itself has a large artificial entrance these days, excavated in 1838, but the original slit where Horner entered still exists.

On a journey through the European alps 6000 years ago, in the days of Otzi the iceman, your chances of seeing a brown bear would have been 99%. These days, alpine bears are almost extinct, yet the caves containing their remains are too numerous to count.

The Feistringhöhle, for example, is located near Hochswab in the central Austrian region of Styria. In 1963, explorers discovered the large skeletons of three brown bears alongside an arrowhead, as though one of the bears had fled into the cave from primitive hunters before succumbing to its wounds. The Wildes Loch cave is also located in Styria, and bear skeletons were unearthed during excavations in 1856 and 1857. They were stuck in a deep pit, and strangely, the bones began to disappear over the years.

The most gruesome discovery was perhaps the eerie Schwalmis-Bärenhöhle of Switzerland. During the first explorations in 1965, cavers found a brown bear skeleton in the deepest point of the cave (known as the Bärenfalle) with a broken left lower jawbone, surrounded by scratch marks in the rock layers. It was theorised to have fallen into the pit and struggled to excavate itself, before slowly dying of starvation.

Grotta d’Ernesta in Italy has one of the oldest skeletons, dated to 11,900 years ago. This male brown bear was found in 1994, at the very back of the cool, damp cave, as though it had entered hibernation and never woken up.

The largest known cave in Alaska, and the first fossil cave to be discovered on Prince of Wales Island. In 1990, explorer Kevin Allred was re-exploring the established upper section of the cave, when suddenly, he stumbled across an undiscovered passage.

Creeping inside, he noticed that the floor was littered with bear fossils, with the highlight being a nearly complete black bear skeleton. Its toes were still in their correct anatomical positions, but surprisingly, tests by archaeologists revealed the skeleton to be 10,750 years old. The next fossil was even more shocking – a grizzly bear so gigantic that they wrongly assigned it to the extinct short-faced bear species (which weighed in at 3000 pounds).

This grizzly skeleton dated back 9670 years, whereas nowadays, Prince of Wales Island has no grizzly bears whatsoever. This could have been a humungous subspecies which no longer exists, failing to migrate southwards into North America. Its bones were scattered across the floor, close to a second entrance which had naturally sealed. A smaller brown bear skeleton was also found, dating back 12,295 years, covered with deep chew marks, clearly coming from a grizzly. The signs were clear: this was an ancient hideout for vicious cannibal bears.  The cave also contained two more animals which no longer live on the island: a 10,050 year old red fox, and a small wolverine tooth.

Maybe you’re feeling inspired to get out there and find an ancient bear skeleton yourself. If so, then great news – fresh skeletons are being found to this day, and one example was a Scandinavian skeleton discovered in a cave near Vestfold, Norway back in 2016. This cave is extremely remote, located on what was possibly the brown bears’ frigid northerly migration route. The fossils dated back 8000 years, making them the oldest yet found in northern Scandinavia. Because the bones showed no signs of cutting or chewing, the ancient bear had probably ventured in for shelter. Perhaps it was an old bear who had been outcompeted for food that summer, or maybe it was diseased.

What’s more, the cave’s walls were covered with black charcoal. It seemed that primitive humans had tried to flush the bear out using choking plumes of smoke. The charcoal was dated back to the Roman era 2000 years ago, versus 8000 for the fossil, so this was clearly another bear using the same shelter 6000 years later (maybe a distant descendant).

Today, Norway has only 250 brown bears, but the cave is still extremely remote, which is why the bones were only discovered 5 years ago. It’s perfectly conceivable that an absentminded visitor could turn around and get a bear-shaped shock even today.

In 1994, archaeologists pressed ahead and discovered a second bear cave on Prince of Wales Island, this time in the island’s north. It was dubbed Bumper Cave, and soon Dr Timothy Heaton and Dave Love were dispatched to the cave’s mountainous entrance, assisted by gear flown in via helicopter.

They scrambled through the first muddy crawlspace, and entered a low horizonal passage filled with rocks and dirt, and numerous poorly preserved bear bones. They squeezed through a second ultra tight crawlspace, and now they’d hit the jackpot, discovering a number of far better preserved bear skeletons. At the back of the room was a 2 meter ledge which led to a fast flowing stream and a rocky platform. There, Heaton and Love found an almost complete brown bear skeleton, which was clearly female and later dated back to 11,645YA.

A few bones had been washed into the depths of the mountain by the stream, never to be seen again, but the only large bone missing was the lower jaw. Lying next to the skeleton were 2 cubs. There was no sign of predator attack – this was another unfortunate bear family which had perished during hibernation.

Over the next ten days, Heaton and Love discovered 10 brown bear fossils in Bumper Cave, plus a single claw of a black bear. One jawbone was dated to 7025 years ago, the latest ever found on Prince Wales Island – could this have been the final extinction date for the island’s bears?

An Iranian bear cave, located in a sandy-coloured canyon with blades of green vegetation swaying at its foot. Darband has two main passages: a shorter cave measuring 30 metres and a longer one measuring 60 metres. With a large square entrance easily visible from over a mile away, Darband has been home to countless animals over the years; its many skeletons include extinct cave bears, deer, wolves, wild goats, and brown bears themselves.

Very few of the bear bones have cut marks, so Darband cave was probably a natural refuge for bears in prehistoric times. These days, Darband cave is as dry as a bone, but travertine limestone deposits prove that a stream once flowed through the middle, which would have given any sheltering bears a nice, clean water supply.

That said, the occasional bone does have a burn mark – could Darband have been a ritual cave? In 2005, artefacts made from terracotta clay were also discovered. An expedition in April 2021 unearthed dozens of animal fossils, plus a human made axe (who else makes them?).

The bear bones in Darband cave have probably been accumulating for hundreds of thousands of years. Imagine what a superstitious local shepherd would have thought if he’d stumbled in one morning.

The post 10 Caves Where Bear Fossils Have Been Found appeared first on Bear Informer.

Since 2010, an amazing phenomenon which only the internet has made possible has taken bear enthusiasts by storm. In Katmai National Park of Alaska, the same park where “grizzly man” Timothy Treadwell hung out, there is a section of the Brooks River called Brooks Falls which is exceptionally dense in salmon. It’s common to see 25 bears at once by these falls, a rarity for the solitary brown bear species. Every year, they converge to gorge on 35 salmon per day, in preparation for their winter hibernation where they won’t eat a morsel for 5 months. The grizzly bears of Brooks Falls can gain 3 pounds a day and 400 pounds in total.

For that reason, Brooks Falls has long been a popular tourist spot, and the bears are fairly tolerant of people. There have been superstar bears from every era, including “supermom” Holly since 2010, and Diver 001 from 1975 to 2002, famous for his old age (estimated to be 35) and rare skill in using the diving method of catching salmon. In 2010, things were taken to the next level with a 24/7 webcam by the Brooks Falls Wildlife Viewing Platform, active in the summer feeding season. Bear maniacs can watch the bears fish, fight, grow older and rear their cubs from the comfort of their own homes.

There was only one problem – where does bear watching go from here? How to take it to the next level? The answer was the fattest bear contest.

The Fattest Bear Competition has been running since 2014. Anybody can take part, as it’s a simple popularity contest. It’s a voting tournament beginning with 12-16 bears where two contenders face off, before the fattest bear advances to the next round. Eventually, 2 fat bears are left, and the one with the most votes is crowned champion. It’s the same format as a tennis tournament, except with monstrously fat bears.

Taking part is easy, as the website displays a picture of the fat bear contender both before and after its summer season bulk up. There’s no need to monitor the webcams 24/7, although you’re perfectly free to do that. The Fattest Bear Competition is more popular than ever – as of 2020, 646,282 votes had been cast over its existence. Individual bears like Holly 435 and Otis are gaining wild fanbases, with the most hardcore fans dressing up as their favourite bears and posting the pictures on Twitter. Dozens of fanatics create their own campaign posters, such as a “winter is coming” poster with 480 Otis sitting righteously on an iron throne. By 2020, the competition had grown so popular that it moved from its facebook page to a website hosted by explore.org, a network of 150 wilderness webcams.

Part of the chaotic fun of the fat bear contest is that there’s no criteria. It’s not about which bear has gained the most subjective weight, it’s about who each individual bear enthusiast perceives as the fattest. People can decide that a bear is more deserving because she has two cubs to care for, had a limp the previous winter, or looks particularly cute and cuddly.

In the yearly Fattest Bear Competition, one contender is unquestionably the GOAT – 480 Otis. This 900 pound blob was first sighted in 2001 as a sub-adult, and since then, he’s become a three time champion. In 2014, he knocked out 410, a famous matriarch first seen in 1989 who may have made her last appearance in 2018 (fingers crossed she’ll be back). In 2016, he defeated 435 Holly, who later got her revenge in 2018, while in 2017, Otis sneaked past 747 to seal his place atop the throne of grizzly obesity. An idea for Bear Grylls to airlift a crown onto Otis’ head was scrapped for safety reasons.

By 2019, his weight was estimated to be 936 pounds. That’s in the range of a Kodiak bear, not a normal grizzly. Then again, Otis isn’t a normal grizzly, he’s a salmon gathering machine. His other claims to fame include the magic power of terrifying the other bears despite not being particularly aggressive. Otis commonly hogs the Jacuzzi, a salmon rich pool where bears can sit down and scoop up fish with ease.

By 2021 a debate had rolled around – was Otis losing his touch? He was 26 and getting on in years. He hadn’t won a “major” in three years and his teeth were looking noticeably ground down, which could have been affecting his food-gathering skills. Nevertheless, he was as fat and dominant as ever, and in 2021 he emerged as the Brooks Falls comeback king and reclaimed his fat bear crown.

Holly 435 was a famous bear long before she won the competition. In 2014, she heartwarmingly adopted a 1 year old cub which had been abandoned by its mother, and had hidden up a tree for 24 hours. She even nursed him alongside her regular cubs. Holly was first sighted by the falls in 2001 as a sub-adult female and has been seen almost every year since, with the possible exception of 2004, meaning that as of 2021, she’s at least 22 years old.

Over her mothering career, Holly has given birth to 5 litters. Not to insult her children, but Holly 435’s finest hour arguably came in October 2019, when she won the title of fattest Brooks Falls bear by 12,000 votes, defeating 775 Lefty. This guy was an aggressive bully, arriving in 2015 and stealing fish from the shier female bears. Holly’s nickname was now officially the Queen of Corpulence.

The best proof of Holly’s fat supremacy is this video from September 2019, showing her sitting on a rocky island surrounded by glacous-winged gulls, looking just like a giant teddy bear. If you met Holly in the wild then your fate would be certain death, due to the irresistible urge to hug her.

No matter how much people feel they understand hibernation, the fat bear legions on Facebook still got a shock in June 2020 when Holly returned as a scraggly, much thinner bear, now with 1 cub in tow.

2020 marked one change in the Fat Bear Survey – a more accurate weighing system. For the first time ever, all bear contenders from years gone by had a serious, though not 100% accurate, calculation of their weight. Katmai National Park employed the services of Terrestrial Laser Scanning Systems, which fires out laser beams that bounce and “echo” off an object.

It’s similar to the echolocation which bats use – the retuning signal is received by a scanner, which when fed into special computer software, can create a fully accurate image. Civil engineers use this technology to map projects and roadways, and the natural progression was obviously fat bears. It wasn’t necessarily intended for Brooks Falls, but with thousands of lasers, any animal target being mapped had to be stationary for 30 seconds. The Brooks Falls bears, stopping and fishing for salmon all day, were a gift for the project.

Now we can determine the weights of the fat bear competitors with no need for a giant set of scales. Here are the results for 5 bears that stood still for long enough.

• 32 Chunk – 1143 pounds.
• 480 Otis – 936 pounds.
• 151 Walker – 1188 pounds.
• 747 – 1408 pounds.
• 854 Divot – 676 pounds.

Otis was the three time winner (as of 2020), but surprisingly light, whereas 747 lived up to his bumper sized reputation. Competition founder Mike Fitz wasn’t surprised, having previously called 747 “the largest I’ve ever seen“. Even he underestimated 747’s monstrous mass, predicting 1200 pounds.

The dawn of summer 2020 saw long dormant rivalries come to the surface. This year, Katmai National Park posted pictures of all the bears from July to October. The prize was there for any bear willing to take it, as the year’s salmon run had been exceptional. 4 million salmon had swam up Nanchek river to spawn, and of those, 20% had swam through Brooks River.

Fans logged on from all corners of the world. Holly was back, and now resembled the shape and colour of a toasted marshmallow. NPS announced 2020’s competition with a picture of Holly, saying “she is beauty and she’s grace, she stuffed so much salmon in her face”. She still had the gift of the gain, but from early summer, Holly entered an all out propaganda battle with 747, a 1400 pound jumbo jet who had spent the entire winter in his cave brooding over why he’d never won.

747 fans like Mike Fitz said he was robbed, while Holly’s cub tweeted several campaign posters in support of her mother saying “please vote for my mommy”. One image appeared of a real jumbo jet with a picture of 747 on its tip – nobody was sure if it was fake or whether 747’s salmon-fuelled energy had given him the power to teleport. But behind the scenes, 480 Otis was looking fairly blimpy too: could this old champion sneak in by the back door?

In July, Katmai National Park declared that 747 was already rotund enough for 6 months of hibernation, and by September, his belly was dragging along the ground. Plus, Holly had a new cub in 2020. She was looking fat, certainly, but now she had to find enough obesity fuel for two bears.

Sure enough, there was a massive upset, as Holly didn’t even make it to the semi-finals. By 21,000 votes to 30,000 she lost to 24 Chunk, a 15 year old male with a scar above his eye and a way with the ladies, including older ones! Nevertheless, he had no intention of turning on the charm with Holly.

Ultimately, it came down to 747 versus 32 Chunk, and 747 won the day by 60,000 votes to 50,000. The crown was finally his! That said, there was a minor scandal when Otis and Holly snubbed his award ceremony. 747 has long been the most massive bear at Brooks Falls, only losing because of the competition’s subjective criteria. He isn’t very aggressive, but scares the other bears into submission simply by wandering into sight. 747 was first sighted in 2004 as a sub-adult, making him 19-21 years old. Mike Fitz shared a photo from those old days here. Believe it or not, the 747 number is purely coincidental. It is a random number assigned, and during 2004, the rangers were into the 700 series. 

All evidence suggests that 747 is a proud father, as in 2015, he successfully courted with 120 Grazer, who emerged with 3 cubs in 2016. But better, 120 Grazier is a semi-finalist in the Fattest Bear Competition herself. She was defeated by 32 Chunk in 2020. Their cubs will undoubtedly be the chosen ones who rule the competition for decades to come.

The imagination of the fattest bear enthusiasts knows no bounds. The self-appointed bear spokesmen have tried to sway people to their cause with memes, movie-style posters, and even poems. “Because he eats a lotamus, he’s practically a yachtamus” said one poem about 747. Another shows 747 standing purposefully in the river while a jumbo jet flies overhead and a bright shining moon looms in the background, 100 times its normal size. The feeling of fate and destiny in this picture is overwhelming. Eat your heart out advertising companies.

Other posters showed 747 sitting calmly in the river with a thought bubble saying “Thank you for your vote”, although these may well have been photographs – nobody is sure. Another shows 747 being hauled to Alaska by a cargo ship about to buckle under his gigaton weight. An image even emerged of a massive blimp flying over an Alaskan lake screaming at people to “vote 747”. Real or not? The truth is long since buried.

Some bears won the hearts and minds of the public with presidential style posters, like 747, who promised a salmon in every paw. Other posters simply ordered people to “vote for 747” with a yellow traffic exclamation mark – no point beating about the bush. “Vote for me, or I will lose… again”, said another poster for 747.

Think that this is all a remote contest on a laptop where the bears are totally oblivious? Think again! Holly and friends are clearly getting into the spirit of the competition, and like any sport, taking it a bit too seriously. On June 24th, for example, two of 2020’s main contenders Otis and 747 almost came to blows.

Otis was standing on a large rock just after the main waterfall, looking happy and calm, when 747 suddenly strutted towards him from nowhere. His teeth were bared and Otis backed off in surprise. Soon 747 had pushed Otis 5 metres downstream. Still in motion, Otis engaged his tactical brain and swerved around so that his back was now facing the waterfall again. For the next minute, the two fat bear competitors bared their teeth and lowered their heads. The tension was heavy, but 747 sensed that he had lost the higher ground and walked off, leaving a confused Otis to get fatter in peace.

By September, war still hadn’t broke out. Otis and 747 were now 300 pounds heavier, and standing 2 metres apart in the deep body of water following the main waterfalls. There was less teeth-baring and charging – it was hard to tell whether they were facing off or having a friendly discussion about the merits of smoked salmon versus fresh. Suddenly, bear 856 approached. With his head facing down, a sign of dominance, he strutted through the middle of Otis and 747. They quickly separated, but obviously, they were only pretending to be scared. After all, 856 has never won the fattest bear competition. Otis and 747 probably had a good laugh about that cocky idiot 856 later.

The competition was conceived by Mike Fitz, a former ranger of Katmai National Park, as a fun idea one afternoon when he was browsing pictures from the Brooks Falls webcam. He never intended for it to be serious, and on September 30th, the first annual “fat bear Tuesday” was held, with all 16 rounds taking place in one day. There was no dramatic launch in a skyscraper with CNN and the BBC attending, just a simple post on the Katmai National Park facebook: “Throughout the day rangers will post “duelling” pictures of bears commonly seen on the #bearcam“. The system was one picture from July 2014 and one significantly more blubbery picture from September. Facebook users would vote for the best one, with the familiar 1 vs 1 knockout system in place, with 16 contenders.

Thus, the first ever fat bear round took place on September 30th at 08:30AKDT, with 284 Electra knocking out 500 Indy. Neither of those bears has ever won, but there’s still time! By 2015, it had morphed into a whole fat bear week, taking place in October.

These days, Fitz is shocked at how the Fat Bear Competition has grown. He’s recently called it a healthy escape from the negativity of social media, with a side course in educating the public about grizzlies.

The post Internet Sensation: The Annual Fat Bear Contest appeared first on Bear Informer.

Unlike the endlessly debated gorilla-bear battle, interactions between bears and wolves have been witnessed thousands of times in the wild. If mankind had never existed, then wolves and bears would nearly always coexist, as their natural habitats are nearly identical – cool northern hemisphere regions, preferably with loads of elk.

In Alaska and Canada, for example, grizzly bears live alongside the grey wolf species. Yellowstone had a 70 year blip starting in 1925 where wolves were regionally extinct, but after a reintroduction, the two now live side by side once again.

Over in Siberia, there are tens of thousands brown bears belonging to both the Eurasian and East Siberian (notoriously aggressive) subspecies. These coexist with tundra wolves, grey wolves, steppe wolves, shy forest wolves, and many more. 

Today, Japan is only home to bears, in the form of the Ussuri brown bear subspecies. But Japan once hosted two species of wolf which lived alongside them, the Honshu wolf and Hokkaido wolf, before both were hunted to extinction (although strange rumours persist of howling in the woods of Hokkaido). Moving westwards, the Himalayan wolf co-exists with the Tibetan blue bear and the Himalayan brown bear. In eastern Europe, the Eurasian brown bear lives side by side with grey wolf subspecies, in the areas where it survives. Bears and wolves are tundra buddies across the whole world.

Being intelligent animals, most brown bears and wolves don’t even attempt to prey on each other. Having evolved side by side, and both being savage predators, the high risk factor of attacking each other has long been programmed into their brains.

Cubs are another story though. In 2001, biologists discovered the carcass of a bear cub in Hayden Valley in Yellowstone park, which had been dead for 3-5 days. Its body was covered with incisor-like canine teeth marks, and its skull was crushed, showing that a large predator dealt the fatal finishing blow. Most tellingly, the nearby soil was covered with bear and wolf pawprints. The nearest climbable tree was 111 meters away, and the nearest forest was 397 metres away – the bear cub had been isolated and picked off.

In 2006, Betsy Downey wrote about a pack of 7 Yellowstone wolves, who had managed to confuse a grizzly mother enough to steal one of her 3 cubs. Downey missed the gruesome killing, but arrived as “the wolves disappeared over a ridge with tails held high”.

Occasionally, wolves go to a real extreme and slip inside a mother grizzly’s den to steal cubs. The opposite – a grizzly stealing wolf cubs – is even rarer, because wolf packs tend to be more protective and better coordinated.

In a one on one battle, there’s no question. A male grizzly bear averages at 600 pounds in weight, while a male grey wolf averages at 100 pounds. The grizzly would swipe the wolf and send him flying into the far horizon.

But as everyone knows, wolves travel in packs that can be 12 strong, whereas grizzlies are solitary animals, with the exception of a mother and her cubs. Wolves are extremely well-coordinated, and worse, they never give up. A Yellowstone director even saw a wolf dash around and “bite a bear in the butt” one time.

The wolf’s main advantage is its higher speeds and superior endurance. It can be difficult for a grizzly to get a single blow in, but if it does, then the wolf is finished. The bears forelimbs, powered by its unique muscular hump, are unrivalled in strength by any other animal. Conversely, a wolf’s strong jaws would make little to no progress against the bear’s thick layers of fat, no matter how well coordinated they are. Wolves are much less skilled than tigers at making a leap for the jugular vein.

The usual scenario is that bears are attracted to wolf dens by the “stank” aroma of wolf kills. The pack appears and the bear takes swipes, before getting so annoyed by the biting and circling that he just leaves, like trying to scoop out honey in the midst of a swarm of bees.

One classic clash between the bear and wolf kingdoms was witnessed on April 1st 2008, by photographer Peter Denlin in Banff National park. A bear was feasting on an elk carcass at the summit of the hill, but the straggly morsels of meat were nothing worth fighting over.

Instead, it started with Nanuk the alpha wolf’s concern over the pregnant Delinda, the top pack female. At first, he approached alone, staring the grizzly down in the snowy clearing. The bear simply sat on his back side to protect his rear. Then Lakota arrived, the oldest male son, followed by Sundance and Silvertip. Now the bear was worried. The 600 pound grizzly stood on his hind legs and smashed his paws down to the snowy earth to demonstrate his immense bear strength. This had moved into a territorial dispute now, with a piece of fur as the stake claim.

For 4 days, the animals didn’t lay a hand on each other, returning at sunrise to “battle” solely in the form of posturing. The 600 pound grizzly would hold his ground, while the wolves would bark and circle him in classic pack formation, less than 1 metre from contact.

At one point, Nanuk and Bear were almost nose to nose, eye to eye, but then Bear did the unthinkable: he picked up the hide in his mouth and shook it. This was a massive insult to Nanuk, and now, the pack chased the grizzly around the snowy enclosure. This lasted for 30 minutes, with bites and swipes flying, but neither side suffered serious injury. The bear began chewing a bone and Nanuk sat down 20 metres away. The next day, Denlin returned to find both the bear and wolves leaving the hill. The 4 day battle was over. Rather than pointless injuries, the top priority for both animals was clearly staying alive.

The relationship isn’t always about war though. In 2013, the internet almost exploded when Lassi Rautiainen took photographs of a female grey wolf and a male brown bear travelling together. They spent 10 days in each other’s company, hunting prey, and even playing together. Epic photos were taken of wolf and bear side by side, gazing in the same direction, united in purpose. Others showed them charging through the woods and splashing in a puddle of water.

They even shared dinner with each other in the evenings, enjoying a deer carcass as the sun set. This friendship took place in the remote forests of northern Finland, in grassy meadows interspersed with the occasional thin tree. Supposedly, they spent 8 hours with each other from 8pm to 4am without fail.

How and why the duo became friends is unexplained, but one theory is that they were a young bear and wolf who lacked experience and felt secure in each other’s company. People feared that the Walt Disney Corporation was starting to bleed into real life, but others welcomed it. Other commenters called it the final proof that humans beings can live together too. Photographer Lassi said “I came across these two and knew that it made the perfect story”.

Japan’s northernmost island of Hokkaido has been terrorised by brown bears in recent years, with Japan having 13,670 bear sightings in 2020 alone. In September 2020, local people rang up government offices near the city of Takikawa to say that a bear was visible “from their window”. People were injured , and scores of innocent bears were shot dead.

Thankfully, the Tokyo University of Agriculture had a solution – fake wolves which scare people on command. By November 5th, 62 monster robot wolves were installed from Hokkaido to Okinawa in southern Japan, where wild boars and deer were the target. The bodies are 120cm long, with a height of 90cm. Each scarecrow wolf is equipped with a high tech motion sensor, and when activated, the metallic beast lets out a roar, shakes its head, and terrifies anyone nearby with a glowing red eye display.

According to Yuji Ota: “We want to let the bears know, “Human settlements aren’t where you live””. The goal was co-existence of man and bear, and secretly, the authorities were hoping that a flood of tourists would arrive as well. Tech wizards are hoping for the sensors to become small and cheap enough that monster robot wolves could be deployed all over Japan – maybe the world.

The plan was to keep the monster robot wolves active until mid-November when the hibernation season kicked in, before restarting them in Spring.

In 1995, grey wolves were finally reintroduced to Yellowstone Park, 70 years after the last pack was shot dead. Farmers in the surrounding regions were worried – what if the wolves wandered in and killed their livestock? Furthermore, could wolves damage the already fragile brown bear population, stealing their prey?

18 years later, it was revealed that brown bears were actually benefitting. The wolf packs had been targeting the local herds of elk for their dinner, and because the elk of Yellowstone particularly rely on berry bushes, this left more berries for bears to devour. Compared to 5 years earlier, the remnants of berries in the bears’ droppings in August had doubled. Berry bushes had become more common in Yellowstone, which included such all-American classics as huckleberry, chokeberry, buffaloberry, twinberry, and serviceberry.

Bears are omnivores, and a diet of 80% meat is no problem for them, but adding berries will improve the Yellowstone bears’ health due to their antioxidants. Curbing the elks (from 19,000 in 1988 to 3900 in 2021) also reduced the pressure which bears were putting on another vegetarian staple, the whitebark pine nut. The revival of berries also helped butterflies, bees and hummingbirds. As for the bears themselves, they’ve expanded from a floor of 136 in 1975 to a bear-tastic 757 in 2014.

Amid the fights, the carcass snatching, and the occasional heartwarming friendship, the net result of grizzlies and wolves overlapping is positive.

Bears and wolves don’t target each other just for the fun of it – the real action comes in competition over fresh kills. According to Yellowstone Park director Doug Smith, it’s not a matter of if a bear will come chasing after a wolf kill, but when. Some bears even have the cheek to appear mid battle. According to this 2001 report, 5 wolves had been attacking a bison calf in Yellowstone for around 3 minutes, when a grizzly suddenly strolled over and pulled the back 2 wolves free. He then spent 1 minute attacking the bison’s rear while the other 3 wolves took care of the front. The grizzly delivered the killing blow, before fighting off the other 3 wolves and hogging the carcass for itself.

Naturally, wolf packs attempt the same piracy with grizzlies, and this youtube video shows a grizzly bear fending off a pack of 12 wolves from its elk carcass. Doug Smith claimed to have seen a grizzly bear defend its carcass against 24 wolves at once. A favourite bear technique is dozing on a carcass, as bear 751 showed in Yellowstone in September 2020, when it drowned an elk in a river close to a tourist-filled road. 3 days later, a cunning wolf turned up, and spent 4 minutes creeping towards the sleeping bear repeatedly, before getting scared away each time by wild, swiping paws.

Overall, bears and wolf packs are surprisingly well matched. Of 19 carcass battles studied in Denali National Park from 1966 to 1974, 9 ended with the wolves winning and 10 ended with the bears.

Like always, there are no concrete rules in the bear-wolf arena. In 2013, an unusually timid bear was captured about 12 miles from the famous Brooks River of Alaska, where the poplar “bear cam” operates all summer. The bear was sleeping on a moose carcass in the river shallows, before a single wolf showed up and started circling him. The bear charged the wolf a couple of times to show him who was boss, but returned to its comfy carcass each time. The wolf wasn’t even acting aggressively, but when a second wolf walked out of the undergrowth, the bear suddenly abandoned its carcass. It left the area for good, leaving the two wolves dinner for a week. 2 fully grown wolves could never take out a bear, so it’s possible that the bear was already tired.

One bloodthirsty story took place recently in a zoo in the Netherlands. Zookeepers had placed 4 bears and 4 wolves together in hope of fostering intra-species cooperation. For months, it worked, and the animals even played with each other. But one day, when a 2 year old female wolf emerged from the water shallows, 3 bears surrounded her and attacked. 2 other wolves tried to save her, but the fourth bear held them off. She didn’t stand a chance of survival. The zookeepers called it a fluke and announced that they wouldn’t alter the cell. If it wasn’t for the dead wolf, this would be a heartwarming example of rare bear co-operation.

Fishing sites are another bear-wolf flashpoint. Brooks Falls is a famous river stretch in Alaska which attracts 20-30 hungry bears at a time in July, but in 2015, Katmai National Park released an old 2007 video of a wolf (which was shared 20,000 times in one day) showing up and scooping up salmon in the raging torrent just a few meters from a brown bear. The bear paid no attention, proving that they don’t automatically fight to the death.

However, the photographer warned that if the bear had been hungrier and more aggressive, things might have panned out differently. A lone wolf would never challenge a dominant bear for optimal fishing spots – even smaller grizzlies would be too much. Wolves are also inferior fishermen, scooping up the scraps and carcasses flowing downstream instead. They only have their mouths – they can’t use their big bear paws to pin slippery salmon to the river bed, or their own bulky bodies.

On July 5th 2020, a wolf became famous after turning up and scoffing down 30 fish, staying there for 3 hours, but this was during a quieter period when few bears were around. Yet occasionally, wolves are filmed stealing salmon catches from bears. Unlike bears, who go for the sweet, sweet brains, wolves avoid salmon heads, as they’re usually a reservoir for parasites, which wolves are more vulnerable to.

The post 10 Facts About The Bear-Wolf Relationship appeared first on Bear Informer.

This is probably the oldest bear myth, most likely dating back to the dawn of time. Common sense says that if you notice a bear, you should pivot 180 degrees and flee from its turf as fast as possible. But this is actually a terrible idea, because the sight of rapid movements will activate a bear’s innate hunting instinct, just like with a lion. It will instinctively see you as its dinner, and soon after, the prophecy will fulfil itself and you will become its dinner.

Instead, you should back away slowly, while making steadily loud but not sharp noises. Most bears attack when spooked, so the idea is to prove that you’re not a threat. Avoid making eye contact, which many animals interpret as a challenge for dominance. The loud noses are to deter a bear that’s motivated by hunger rather than defence – you need to show the aggressive bear that you’re not worth the effort compared to small mammals.

Outrunning a bear is an impossible task anyway, unless perhaps it’s bear 747, the 1400 pound winner of the fattest bear competition in 2020. The grizzly’s top speed is 35mph, with a strong endurance that can sustain speeds of 30mph over 2 miles. Over short distances, a bear can even match a racehorse. You might be “the fastest kid in my school”, but don’t push your luck! Even Usain Bolt at the peak of his powers couldn’t outrun the average brown bear.

“Bears have an excellent sense of smell to make up for poor vision”. Don’t fall for this urban legend, or you might find yourself inside a bear’s stomach. If anything, the opposite is true. Bears are one of a lucky handful of animals to have superb night vision.

Bears have a reflective membrane lining the backs of their eyeballs called the tapetum lucidum. By allowing retinal cells to absorb light for a second time, this dramatically enhances a bear’s vision in darkness, making the most of the small traces of light hovering around. The tapetum lucidum is why bear, dog, and cat eyes glow green when you flash them with a torch at night. Bears have one advantage over dogs too: full colour vision. Colour blind people are able to perceive yellow and blue as different shades of grey, but not the subtle shades within those colours.

Therefore, some scientists trained various bears to associate foods with different shades of blue. When coloured containers were later placed in front of them, the hungry bears were able to differentiate between blue with red tinges, blue-green, blue-grey and blue-yellow. The explanation is that they are omnivores, and rely on colours to identify edible plants such as berries.

So remember – wearing a bush outfit won’t save you from being eaten, or from being hugged.

Like a bull brushing its back foot against a dusty floor, a bear standing on its hind legs is supposedly a sure sign that some full throttle grizzly action is imminent.

The truth is more innocent – that bears can see, hear, and plan much more easily when on their hind legs. Therefore, that’s what grizzlies do when checking the best route ahead, trying to descend a cliff, looking for non-human prey, or simply admiring the view.

There’s no truth to this old wives tale. The real warning signs are grunting, barking, and growling, showing that the bear is agitated. Hanging its head low with its ears upright is another great indicator, as is direct eye contact. Personally, I’d be concerned if the bear was licking its lips as well.

Actually, the grunting sounds are part of another myth. These bear noises don’t guarantee that a bear attack is imminent, only that the bear is in an agitated state of mind where assault could be possible. It doesn’t mean that a charge is seconds away, so don’t drop your rucksack and flee into the distance. It’s best not to venture into bear country without bear spray in the first place. In fact, if you’re scared, you could always reread Winnie the Pooh for the 1021st time instead.

Playing dead is the correct strategy if the bear is charging for purely defensive reasons, i.e. a mother defending her cubs. She’s not hungry; she just wants to see the threat removed to ensure her offspring’s survival. However, the consensus among bear experts is that it’s a terrible move against pursuing, predatory bears, moving silently on your tail through the deep dark forest.

A bear’s goal when hunting is acquiring the most possible food for the least possible cost. That’s why brown bears will commonly scavenge the kills of wolves or cougars, or default to time-tested strategies like berry picking. If you lie down and curl into a foetal position, you are simply making the bear’s job easier. Instead, the official recommendation is to make yourself as large as possible, and talk in a loud voice, to show the bear that you’re not an easy target.

The only reason to curl up is if the bear spray has failed, your body language tactics have done wrong, punching it in the nose didn’t work, and the only strategy you have left is protecting your internal organs while accepting that some limbs will have to go.

A side point states that you should keep playing dead even if the bear starts to bite you, as sudden movements could well spook it. No recommendations on what to do if you’re in its stomach.

A common recommendation in youtube comments is to never venture into “bear country” (whose borders are murky) without a firearm. But this is flawed for two reasons. Firstly, most bears hate it when high speed bullets speed towards them, and secondly, the average bullet might not even pierce the bear’s flesh unless it’s a direct shot to the skull. The result will be an even angrier bear than the one which first made you draw your gun.

Shooting a bear will just heat up the confrontation further, particularly if it’s only a handgun. It doesn’t matter if you utter your favourite Schwarzenegger one liner from 1987. A study from the 1990s found that 50% of bear victims who defended themselves with guns suffered serious injury, compared to 10% for bear spray. Rifles are commonly recommended, but despite the added firepower, the result is usually the same.

Just recently in 2018, bear biologist Tom Smith analysed 133 defences using bear spray, and noted only 3 minor injuries. But among 269 gun defences, he discovered carnage all around: 17 dead humans and hundreds of dead bears. Bear spray is better for both of us.

Bear spray, meanwhile, is specially formulated to create a cloud of intolerable gas that a bear cannot run through without severe discomfort. The cans contain a chilli compound called capsaicin that stings the throat and eyes.

Don’t trust the feeling of invincibility that comes with a rifle! Even a bazooka shell might bounce off a bear – you can never underestimate them.

If you’re a woman on your period, then you should never cross the border of “bear country”, or a patiently waiting grizzly will leap from the forest and gobble you up instantly. That’s the theory anyway – that brown bears are particularly receptive to the scents and hormones of menstrual fluid. In the 1980s, some female Yellowstone employees were even banned from working within the park’s borders while menstruating. It taps into the fear of bears as a supernatural predator, with immense navigational skills and senses. Dogs are also known to sniff out menstruating women.

But there isn’t any solid evidence for this theory. The whole idea dates back to the notorious Night of the Grizzlies back in 1967, when two women were massacred as they camped in Glacier National Park. Amid a wave of soul searching fuelled by heavy media coverage, it was reported that one woman was menstruating while the other had tampons in her backpack. A myth was born, but when Dr Steve Herroro analysed 100 brown bear attacks from the 20th century, only one concerned a menstruating woman – the Night of the Grizzlies itself.

Black bears also offer clues, as when Ely researchers spoke to 300 black bear experts at a conference, none could recall cases of menstruating women being assaulted. Checking through the archives, Dr Steve Herrero found no mentions of assaults on menstruating women by black bears in the entire 20th century. Even government brochures regurgitate this myth!

The saying goes that if you unwittingly wander into bear territory, you should simply run downhill, because bears are unable to. Instead, a bear can only shuffle downwards hesitantly. But is it true? The answer is a resounding no. We know this because it’s been seen hundreds of times. A bear has an average running speed of 35mph, with strong endurance, and when running down a mountain or hillside they join forces with the phenomenon known as gravity.

Proponents of this theory argue that it’s a standard training guideline of the US military or Yellowstone Park, but it isn’t! There’s no evidence for their claims. Following this strategy is a golden passport to mauling city.

The myth started because a bear’s front legs are shorter than its back legs. Try to picture the downhill motion – it certainly makes sense in terms of basic physics, causing unwieldiness like a cow on rollerskates, but it doesn’t matter, because bears run downhill every day. The other incorrect theory is that a bear will somehow trip on its own claws. If true, you’d probably die anyway as you get crushed by a large, rolling ball of fur. The myth dates back at least to 1857, when a Californian hunter called Charles Chubbuck bumped into a grizzly bear and knew that he had to run downhill immediately (which he later told a Massachusetts newspaper).

It is true, however, that dolphins cannot swim up waterfalls.

It sounds like a logical safe haven from a big, lumbering beast, but grizzlies are actually decent tree climbers. Though they lack the prowess of black bears, with their lighter bodies and perfectly shaped claws, brown bears can still make it up a tree if push comes to shove. If the bear does follow you, then you’ll have nowhere to go. Your only option would be jumping. Worse, you could be stuck in a tree with a bear while it relays boring, rambling stories about the best beehives to steal honey from.

The strategy might work if the branches were thick enough to support your weight, but too thin for the 800 pound bear’s. The problem is that you’d never have time to choose the perfect tree in the split second between life or death as the bear charges.

The strategy isn’t completely useless though. In 2012, Ben Radakovic was hiking through the Alaskan wilderness when he came upon the unholy grail of bears: a mother guarding its cubs. It charged Radakovich and bit him, and prompted by a rush of pure adrenaline, he climbed the nearest tree as high as he possibly could. By a miracle, the bear didn’t follow, and Radakovich was able to make a 911 call where the operator simply asked him “do you need an ambulance”. It’s not foolproof, but if you’re lucky, your bear foe might decide that climbing isn’t worth the effort.

Bear bells first became popular in the early 1980s, but whether they work is less clear than ever. The idea is that brown bears hate surprises, preferring to be the all-seeing master of their terrain. Many hikers recommend talking loudly, singing, or even yodelling as they pass through known bear hotspots, to give the bear a chance to flee from this unfamiliar foe. Bear bells are strapped to backpacks, boots or clothing to ring constantly as you walk. Supposedly, a bell is a doubly effective bear deterrent because it’s such an unnatural sound for a bear in the wilderness.

Yet the reality is very different. In 1982, a study found that nobody who wore a bell that year in Glacier National Park was injured by a bear. However, an experiment by Dr Tom Smith on 15 Katmai National Park bears noticed that none reacted to the bells, but most swung to attention when a pencil was snapped.

Some hikers argue that bears pay more attention to sudden, sharper sounds like a shout or a horn. Others believe that bears simply mistake the sound of bells for tweeting birds and don’t react at all.

Would you like to be bear proof? Then don’t put your faith in a cheap, plastic bell!

A very bad idea, unless you want to solve starvation issues in the brown bear community – with yourself. Paradoxically, despite the capsaicin mixture in bear spray being unbearable, bears are attracted to the distant scent of it on the wind. A bear can smell potential prey for 20 miles away, and this mixture will probably have a smaller range, but still be powerful enough to draw in bears that would have never normally crossed your path.

It sounds like common sense, as by spraying every surface in your camp, you could theoretically create an island oasis of bear-proof relaxation in the middle of the wilderness. It’s like getting one step ahead of the game, but in reality, only a spray to the face will cause a bear to “short circuit”. Famous bear scientist Tom Smith once visited a beach and sprayed a 1 meter patch with capsaicin-containing bear spray. Over the next week, 20 bears visited. None were repelled, 10 licked the bear spray patch, 11 rolled in it, while 16 rubbed their heads in it.

It’s very important to test fire your bear spray, both to check that the can works and to get a feel for aim, but Smith recommends strongly against doing this at camp. The bears were attracted to the patch 5 days after spraying, and Smith managed to burn himself on a patch sprayed an entire month ago.

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