The original actress bear. Bozo was a gigantic female Kodiak bear who shot to fame when she portrayed real life grizzly bear Benjamin Franklin in the TV show The Life and Times Of Grizzly Adams. The real Ben Franklin was actually a male, a Californian grizzly bear (an extinct subspecies) who befriended the real life Grizzly Adams and even saved his life during a vicious battle that left his skull lacerated. Bozo starred in the show from 1977 to 1978, and became a familiar sight on US TV screens.

Bozo began life in Katmai National Park in 1960, and was abandoned by her mother. She was picked up by Juneau Animal Rescue, before embarking upon a career in the Ringling Brothers circus until her early teens. Bozo was already well trained, and transitioned to acting smoothly. She also starred in The Legend of Black Thunder Mountain in 1979, as a wild grizzly who charges from the woods and scares the kids into playing dead, before turning out to be a friendly bear who leads them into a magical valley. Uncommonly for a bear on film, her character name didn’t include the word bear: it was “Mrs Mullen” instead. Bozo was said to have an excellent relationship with Dan Haggerty, the actor who played Grizzly Adams, and numerous photos survive showing the pair smiling and joking together.

Another claim to fame is Bozo’s extraordinary lifespan of 38 or 39. After a fruitful career, she died on January 8th 1999 in a cosy Nebraska bear sanctuary.

The most famous actor bear. Bart the bear was the “brainchild” of famous bear trainer Doug Sues and his wife Lynn. The couple bought young Bart from Boston zoo, collecting him personally at the airport and feeding him a special high-fat feeding formula they’d developed.

For the next three years, Doug dove into training Bart with a manic passion, and by 1981, he was ready to appear in his first film, Windwalker, a native American themed film where Bart’s role was simply to turn up and maul someone. He had more success in Clan Of The Cave Bear from 1986, where his brutal swipes took out several Neanderthal hunters before he was pinned to the floor and stabbed repeatedly with a small knife. Bart was acclaimed for this brief performance, but it paled compared to The Bear (1988). Directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud, the plot centred around an adult male bear who decides to adopt a small cub. To prepare him, the director gave Bart a large sized teddy bear.

Bart probably had the longest credits list of any actor bear – his other films included White Fang, Legends of the Fall, and The Edge starring Sir Anthony Hopkins. In 1998, he helped Mike Myers to present the Oscars, but not long after, a cancerous tumour was discovered on Bart’s paw. After a heroic battle, he was euthanised on May 10th 2000. His enduring nickname was the John Wayne of bears, and by adulthood, Bart stood 9 feet tall and weighed a hefty 1500 pounds.

The most civilised actor bear. Hercules was lucky to be walking the Earth at all, let alone be starring in blockbuster movies. He was born in captivity in the Highland Wildlife Park in 1975, and escaped death by the skin of his teeth when the zoo announced that they no longer had the resources to support growing bears. Thankfully, he was scooped up by a Mr Robins for £50, and from 1976 onwards, the duo teamed up to storm the UK wrestling circuit, which probably made people thankful for once that the sport was completely rigged. This wrestling training translated well into acting, and in 1983, Hercules appeared in the James Bond film Octopussy alongside Roger Moore (in the circus scenes near the end).

While filming an advert on the Outer Hebrides in 1980, Hercules escaped. After intense international media coverage, hundreds of Scottish locals joined the search, which was called off after three days after nobody had any luck. After 3 weeks, Hercules was spotted swimming, looking significantly thinner than usual. Amazingly, he hadn’t preyed upon any of the island’s sheep, cattle or wildlife. Hercules was famous for his dislike of raw meat – he much preferred the civilised taste of cooked meat.

From that moment on, Hercules was dubbed “Hercules the human bear”, which eventually became the name of a documentary about him in 2014. Another of Hercules’ better performances was a Kleenex tissue advert in 1982, which used the ingenious pun of “Big Softy”.

Hercules is another deceased actor bear, dying on January 1st 2001 from natural causes at age 25.

The scariest actor bear. Whopper was born in January 1998, and grew to be almost as gigantic as his predecessor Bart, standing 8 feet tall and weighing 1400 pounds. His massiveness isn’t surprising given that Whopper is a Kodiak bear, the largest subspecies to walk the Earth, and his repertoire as an actor is equally intimidating. Whopper can hurl objects with incredible accuracy, is trained to charge on command, and is famed for his stand-on-hind-legs and roar act.

His more innocent tricks include moving objects and placing them in the precise location ordered by trainers. As for his acting career, Whopper’s finest hour came in 2004 when he starred in Anchorman alongside Will Ferrell (who strangely seems to attract bears like a magnet).

More recently, Whopper the bear duelled Alexander Ludwig in a whiteout blizzard for the TV show Vikings in 2016. By now, he was much friendlier on set, but he did become convinced during the shoot that a clothesline was a fully charged electrical wire.

Whopper has also turned his hand to selling Kellogg’s cornflakes, proving that they’re the ultimate cereal by awakening from hibernation, walking into a kitchen, and stealing some in a 55 second advert that aired in 2010. In fact, commercials are Whopper’s speciality; he’s also advertised Rice Krispy treats, Spring Air Mattresses, and Chobani Yoghurt.

Whopper is now 23 years old, still going strong alongside his bear pals Barney and Betty (more on them soon). A more recent performance was in the comedy Super Troopers 2 in 2018.

The most famous modern day actor bear. No, he isn’t related to the original Bart, except in spirit. In fact, Bart the second is a totally different subspecies, an Alaskan interior bear rather than a scale-breaking Kodiak. However, his filmography is almost as respectable, starting in 2001 just one year after his birthday in January 2000. He’s part of the Doug and Lynn Sues clan alongside Tank the bear, so where better to start his career than playing Tank’s cub, born in the final moments of Doctor Doolittle 2.

Since then, Bart 2 has played a marauding grizzly in a horror film called Into The Grizzly Maze (2015), with a timeless who-will-survive storyline where Billy Bob Thornton meets up with his estranged brother and ventures into a bear-infested wilderness for 2 days along with a group of teenagers. Americans first became acquainted with Bart II in 2001, when Brad Pitt narrated a documentary called Growing Up Grizzly which focussed on his life, alongside his sister Honeybump. Pitt had previously starred in Legends of the Fall alongside Bart the second’s “Dad”, and in 2004, a follow up episode of Growing Up Grizzly was released, updating viewers on Bart’s life.

The most heartwarming part of the Bart 2 story is that for 21 years, he lived with his beloved sister Honeybump. The two were orphaned as young cubs in Alaska, and little could they anticipate the dizzy heights of showbiz that awaited them. Bart 2 died in 2021.

The most overlooked actor bear. Tank isn’t listed as an official actor bear on the wikipedia page, but back in 2001, he landed the starring role in Doctor Doolittle 2, the final film in the series to star Eddie Murphy. He played the circus bear Archie, the last surviving male Pacific bear on Earth, who Dr Doolittle visits in order to persuade him to become a real bear and make babies with the last surviving female. Naturally, things go wrong, and Dr Doolittle faces accusations of neglecting his wife while pursuing his mad schemes. But the story ends happily, with Tank (I mean, er, Archie) breeding with Ava and producing two healthy cubs (including Bart II). And no, the voiceover wasn’t performed by Tank himself – it was dubbed.

Elsewhere, Tank has mainly focussed on documentaries. He’s another member of the Doug Seus roster and was designated heir apparent to Bart after being born back in January 1995. Recently, Tank starred in Man vs Bear on the Discovery Channel. The name says it all, as wannabee tough guys are made to compete against Tank and his bear pals Bart 2 and Susie in various backbreaking competitions, which they mostly (scratch that, invariably) lost. Tasks include pushing a 2000 pound wooden barrel and eating a delicious pile of dead insects.

It’s said that Tank has a remarkably gentle disposition, even by the standards of showbiz bears. His height is 7 foot 1 and his weight is a hefty 800 pounds.

The most tragic bear actor. Rocky was a male grizzly bear trained in the niche of on-set wrestling, and rose to fame in 2008 when he starred as “Dewey the killer bear” in Semi-Pro. The film also starred Will Ferrell as a basketball coach who wrestles a bear to promote his struggling team, and the shoot went without any hitches. Rocky received plaudits for his performance, but 7 weeks after Semi-Pro‘s worldwide release, Stephan Miller and his cousin decided to use Rocky for a promotional video for the Predators In Action charity organisation.

The plan was for a staged wrestling match, but early in the shoot, Rocky stood up into his wrestling position too early, and swiped at Miller before he could raise his arm into the official defensive position. Randy whacked the bear with a cane, but this only made Rocky angry. Seconds later, the bear delivered a single bite to the neck of Randy, piercing his jugular vein, and leaving him dead within minutes.

The California Department of Fish and Game immediately began a debate over whether to put Rocky down, and PETA intervened with protests. Stephan Miller said that Randy would have wanted the bear to continue, and ultimately, it was ruled that the death was a tragic accident and that Rocky should be allowed to exist as a normal sanctuary-dwelling bear. His acting career, however, was all but over, although a case was brought and denied in 2012 which would have loosened some of the restrictions.

The least famous actor bear. Born in January 1999, Barney is the Daniel Day Lewis of the bear acting community, picking and choosing his roles for maximum impact. So far, he’s only been in three films: Against the Wild in 2013, Anchorman in 2004, and his debut Grizzly Falls in 1999, where a bear kidnaps a random young boy (as they’re known to do). Barney was a close associate of Whopper, being raised by animal trainer Ruth LaBarge alongside Betsy, who Barney had a particularly tight bond with. The two bears would sit and cuddle up to each other while filming adverts, while Whopper was more of a schoolyard bully.

One day in 2002, American Express came up with the mad idea of an advert where Jerry Seinfeld rants about the greatness of credit cards while his campsite is besieged by bears. The shoot went perfectly, until the curious Barney sniffed at a patch of salmon juice on the floor. Suddenly, the bears’ wilderness instincts came rushing back. Whopper pushed Barney away from the patch, and within seconds, the two bears were on their hind legs and slugging it out for total dominance, stumbling worryingly close to a $0.5 million set of camera equipment.

The air was thick with tension, as the crew was armed with pepper spray, chains and wooden sticks. Ruth LaBarge jumped in the way and warned everybody to stay calm, but before the tranquiliser gun could fire, Whopper and Barney suddenly gave up. The fight had only lasted ten seconds.

The “Robert Redford” of actor bears. Brody the bear was born in captivity on January 14th 1995, and was arguably always destined for showbiz. Like Bart and Whopper, Brody is a Kodiak bear, and was trained to be an acting professional by bear expert Jeff Watson.

Brody made his debut aged just 12 weeks old on Good Morning America, followed by the Today Show at 14 weeks and the Tonight Show with Jay Leno at 5 months. By 1998, Brody had starred as “grizzly bear” in an episode of Promised Land where the characters camp in the North Carolina wilderness and a little girl goes missing. But the crown jewel of his career came in 2008, when he played the lead grizzly villain in Grizzly Park. The plot concerns a group of 8 young adult offenders who are sent to the Californian wilderness to achieve redemption, alongside a ranger who gives them spiritual guidance. Naturally, they encounter obstacles, and Brody was one of them, alongside a bloodthirsty escaped serial killer.

In the real world, however, Brody is described as having a very sweet face, and once met up with Muhammed Ali in his mansion for a chat. On the advertising front, Brody is a star for Energizer Batteries and Rice Krispies, and in 2007, he paid a visit to Nutramax Labs to buy a glucosamine supplement after he started having joint problems. Today, Brody the Bear is going as strong as ever.

The most unfortunately named actor bear. Brutus never mauled a man in his life and as a grizzly bear rather than a Kodiak bear, he wasn’t even that big, weighing in at 880 pounds. The Brutus story started in January 2002 when he was born in captivity, spending the first 6 months of his life in a tiny steel box. A naturalist called Casey Anderson found him, trained him, and made him the focus of an episode of a National Geographic Wild program called Expedition Grizzly. This spawned an entire TV series focussing on the bear-man duo, called America the Wild with Casey Anderson.

Brutus’ acting debut came in 2008 with Iron Ridge. Casey Anderson also had a starring role, as the friend of William Price, an overconfident yuppy who gets lost in the Montana wilderness and has to survive bitter cold, food shortages, and of course, a marauding grizzly bear.

Next on the agenda was Pretty Ugly People in 2009, another Montana production, but this time belonging to the comedy genre. Actress Missi Pyle plays a formerly obese woman who stuns her ragtag pack of friends by turning up to a 4 day hiking trip with a much slimmer build, having just completed gastric bypass surgery. Inevitably, there’s a bear scare along the way, and Brutus’ immense acting talents made it much more convincing.

When Anderson became engaged to Pyle after meeting each other on set, Brutus served as his best man. Sadly, Brutus is another deceased actor bear, dying on February 4th 2021.

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The Pyrenees is perhaps the main bear battleground of Europe today. From the 1800s peak where hundreds of bear trainers left Pyrenees villages and crossed the Atlantic, the bears were hunted down to 4 survivors by 1995, far beyond hope of natural genetic survival. The only solution was introducing bears from elsewhere, and alongside the female bears Zika and Melba, Pyros was part of the original wave of reintroductions from Slovenia. Little did they know that Pyros would become the most famous and long-lived of the lot, and be dubbed the sexually dominant superdaddy by international media.

When Pyros was identified in the Slovenian woods, he was already an established, 550 pound 8 year old, born in 1989. France’s bear team feared that the Slovenian government wouldn’t let go of such an irresistible attraction to trophy hunters, but Pyros was captured in a tube trap on May 1st 1997. He  was transported 1000s of miles by truck, through the long, winding mountain roads to the sleepy French Pyrenees village of Melles.

With 100 journalists watching on and flashing their cameras, the metal bars were opened (video), and Pyros took his first tentative steps onto the paved floor. He deduced within seconds that he was now a free bear, and broke the first rule of his 20 year Pyrenees career – he charged his way through a wooden fence instead of continuing down the peaceful leaf-littered path as instructed. Within 30 seconds, Pyros was gone. He was now the newly appointed king of the French Pyrenees.

Pyros wasted no time in sampling the buffet that the Pyrenees farmlands had to offer. Within 8 days, he had slain a sheep and almost completely consumed it, but for a while, Pyros was overshadowed by the bloodthirsty female bear Melba, who stole cattle left, right and centre, and was shot dead in 1998 after charging a nervous pig hunter. On April 5th 1998, Pyros stumbled into a forest trap, lured by the smell of fresh blood. Bear biologists fitted him with a VHF radio collar to track his movements, but only days later, the crafty Pyros had shaken the collar free from his neck, possibly while scratching his back on a tree.

The next 3 months were peaceful, as Pyros spent April-June 1998 in the Aran valley on the Spanish side, eating only berries, shrubs and small insects. He crossed over the French border briefly to steal 3 beehives from the sleepy village of Fos, but in late July, Pyros returned to France with full force, eating a sheep near Luchon and leaving 15 sheep so badly injured that herdswoman Christine G had to put them down. Farmers were reimbursed and promised a free Patou dog to circle their homesteads, but 2000 saw another trail of mayhem, as Pyros attacked livestock near Betpouney in May, before savagely assaulting 7 sheep near Bordères-Louron in August. Pyros knew that he could operate with complete unpredictability, because his refitted radio collar had stopped transmitting in September 1999.

Pyros had already taken over Melba’s place as the most notorious Pyrenees bear, to such an extent that one particularly gruesome incident was automatically blamed on him. In the French village of Lançon, at 9pm, the local postman was following a path overlooking the meadow of farmer Jean Rodgers, when he noticed that the 200 sheep inside the meadow were standing in unusually tight formation. From the nearby forest, a large brown “dog” emerged, which was actually a bear.

The bear circled the herd for a while, deliberately keeping quiet to avoid spooking them. Then with zero effort, the bear shepherded a single sheep away from the flock and killed it with a kick of its paw, before jumping on the corpse to prevent it from moving. Witnesses swore that the bear walked upright on its hind legs like a man, as it scooped the carcass up in its left paw and walked 100 metres higher up the hillside.

When farmer Jean Rogers arrived, he and the postman approached to within 100 metres, and it was clear that the bear was watching them. Licking its lips, the bear approached the adrenaline-filled duo, but when a 4 x 4 drove up from the village and began flashing its lights, the bear turned around and headed for the forest. When they approached the sheep carcass, its heart, liver and brains had been removed with almost surgical precision. The authorities never proved anything, but based on his recent locations, Pyros was the number 1 suspect.

Surprisingly, Pyros then became a significantly more elusive bear after 2002. He was so rarely sighted that farmers debated whether he was dead, which government bear trackers knew was false due to camera trap footage.

There was uproar in 2006 when the French authorities reintroduced 5 all new bears from Slovenia, 4 females and 1 male. Bloody carcasses were thrown at the local mayor by screaming farmers, and glass-laced honey was left by the highways, but this drama came and went with little involvement from the mysterious Pyros.

However, he wasn’t lazing around with a jar of honey, far from it. In the deep, wild back valleys, Pyros had fathered 15 all new Pyrenees bear cubs by 2010, and an estimated 10 had survived. One romantic event took place in June 2010 when Pyros appeared in two blurry camera trap pictures walking the local woods with Hvalata the female bear.

It was a lovely sight which increased the world’s love metre by 0.2%, but soon, the bear duo was blamed for a string of savage ewe attacks in the fields of Antras in Ariège province. This had been Pyros and his girlfriend’s main turf recently, and farmers had found many animals disembowelled and frightened, after long hikes up the mountain slopes to their wandering herds. June had been a rainy month, cloaking the fields in a thick, freezing fog which had reduced visibility to 2 metres and given the bears the perfect disguise. Some couples go to the gym together, others go jogging together – Pyros and Hvalata had better ideas.

Note: Pyros is the second bear in the video above.

From 2002 to 2010, Pyros made 10 cubs with Caramelles the female bear alone, including Caramellita born in 2002, and Plume born in 2010. There was only one downside, a harsh fact of the cruel bear world – Caramelles was his own daughter! She was born in 1997 as the daughter of deceased Slovenian bear Melba. Likewise, Pyros had no qualms with breeding with his granddaughter (and daughter) Caramellita starting in 2006.

It reached the point where the authorities declared a crisis in genetic diversity which could scupper the entire Pyrenees reintroduction project via a slew of birth defects. Pyros was dubbed a “superdaddy”, but was so sexually dominant that the other male bear, Balou, was forced to wander the central Pyrenees all alone. No cubs had been attributed to this rival male using genetic testing.

By now, Pyros was 26 years old. The authorities had expected his sexual energy to wane with age, but like with Otschi the Austrian bear back in 1992, he was still making babies when he would normally be entitled to claim his grizzly bear pension. The next year, the authorities revealed plans to castrate him, but this never happened, probably because they realised that they had to find him first. 2013 saw the first male bear other than Pyros to reproduce since 2004, but scuppering the hopes of a fresh injection of genes, it was Moondaddy, Pyros’ son.

The Pyrenees bear population is divided into two subpockets, with the vast majority being in the central Pyrenees and 6 bears roaming the western Pyrenees, bear islands which are separated by the Pic du Midi de Bigorre and Néouvielle ridges. Pyros was a central bear, and in keeping with his massive sexual appetite, Pyros was originally an extremely adventurous bear whose territory encompassed 1000 square kilometres.

By 2011 he started to stick to more familiar territories, and two French villages he was constantly spotted near are Fos and Melles, which are 3km from each other. These are villages of stone, pebbled buildings and  constantly murmuring animal sounds which could easily be from the 18th century if it wasn’t for the cars and satellite dishes. Fos and Melles have 249 and 91 residents respectively and are surrounded by green valleys with lush fields and a small river, with an ancient church perched amidst the rocks.

This was classic bear country for Pyros to hang out in, including several wooden huts kept by farmers in the mountains for him to break into. Fos was where Pyros stole three beehives back in 1998. Unfortunately, it’s something of a ghost town nowadays, as its population was 1724 back in 1851. There was once a tramway, 2 hairdressers, 2 hotels and restaurants, and a grocery store, but many shops now lie empty. The rumours of a sexually aggressive bear in the woods probably didn’t help.

One of a bear tracker’s favourite tricks is not just to place a camera trap, but to lure a bear to that spot by spraying special scents on trees. A wire mesh is placed on the trees which captures the bears’ fur as they instinctively rub their backs on it, which allows genetic testing and makes the wild goose chase of picking up fur from the forest floor unnecessary. It was with these inventive new traps that several excellent videos of Pyros were captured in 2011 and 2012.

One was taken in April 2012 and showed a bored-looking Pyros approaching a twig-like tree which he could probably snap with his little finger. He half-heartedly rubs and licks the tree before deciding that he can’t eat it, and then the video cuts to a second, unidentified bear 8 days later, which is covered with snow like a Christmas mascot.

In the July 2011 edition, however, Pyros got much more animated, standing up and rubbing his back on the tree like he was the life of the party. The video has 4 different clips of Pyros arriving within 3 days, the scent was so attractive. An August 12th video shows Pyros in full dancing-bear mode, and on August 27th, Pyros and rival male Balou arrived at a scented tree within 20 minutes of each other. The biologists were an inch away from capturing footage of a full on bear brawl.

2014 dawned with the disturbing announcement that Balou the bear was dead, possibly due to a horrifically unlucky strike of lightning. Pyros had won the battle of the superdaddy bear once and for all, but with Moonboots and Pepite fathering 5 cubs between them from 2013-2015, there were signs that Pyros’ reign was coming to an end.

In winter 2015/2016, Pyros didn’t hibernate at all, and a frosty picture emerged of the bear with a coat sprinkled with snow. He was now 27, and had a definite tired and scraggly quality about him. Media speculation that Pyros was on his last legs reached boiling point on May 8th when a camera trap video showed him struggling to climb a forested hillside, as though his legs were painful. His manner was very lethargic, and later, a nighttime image flashed him dozing in the exact same location.

Was his body giving out? Not in every way, because in mid 2016, Pyros returned to form and fathered yet 2 more cubs with Caramelles. These were the couples’ 13th and 14th, but would they prove to be Pyros’ last? April 2017 saw a series of camera trap images of Pyros, again showing a thinner, snow-sprinkled bear standing near a thick tree trunk. After that, there was silence. Nothing was seen or heard of Pyros the bear for the rest of the year.

Pyros had enjoyed a long reign as the oldest bear of the Pyrenees mountains. He had enjoyed a rare bear luxury of moving to an entirely new country at age 9 and exploring its turf, but in early 2019, the grim announcement came: Pyros hadn’t been seen or photographed since April 2017. No pawprints or fur had been spotted in the wild forests and meadows which he once ruled. Pyros wasn’t collared with a GPS transmitter, so there was no inarguable final proof, but the Pyrenees bears are the most closely surveilled population in the world, with dozens of camera traps lined with special attractive scents. Because there was “almost two years without any trace” the authorities were “practically sure that he is dead“.

Instead of death by hunter or car collision, all signs suggested that Pyros had died in his hibernation den after failing to gather enough food. The corpses of wild bears are almost never discovered, and Pyros’ skeleton probably lies in a mysterious forest hollow which will lie undiscovered for 100 years. But the old grandad bear still had one last piece of his reign of terror to play out, as the authorities warned that his death was only “probable”.

Since 2019, the 230 year old Pyros hasn’t been seen again, and arguably the final nail came when Pyros disappeared from the “list of bears in the Pyrenees” page of the French wikipedia. The 2016 cubs proved to be his last after all.

Video note: Pyros starts at 16 seconds.

While his weight yo-yoed like any constantly fattening and slimming down bear, Pyros’ average was about 550 pounds, which is nothing compared to a Kodiak bear, but large for a European brown bear or Yellowstone male.

Surprisingly, Pyros had no fondness for honey. He pinched three beehives in Fos back in 1998, but in 2014, only 1 beehive was destroyed by bears across the entire French Pyrenees. He never attacked any hikers, farmers, wandering villagers, crashlanded pilots, or any humans at all. The closest was probably the 2002 incident, and another happened in 1998, when a young shepherdess spent the whole night monitoring her flock at an altitude of 2000 metres. Suddenly, nearby bear watchers picked up the beep beep signal of his radio tracker. It was circling the shepherdess and her herd, in what seemed to be a predator formation. Nevertheless, the rumble of bear paws and massive swipe never came, although they found the rotting head of an attacked sheep the next day.

It’s said that Pyros killed 50 ewes per year until 2002, after which his mysterious disappearance took place. Pyros was known to skip hibernating sometimes, such as in winter 2001/02. His conquests were many, beginning with his fellow Slovenian bear Zika in 1997, a coupling which produced Kouki the male. The same year, he got together with Melles the Slovenian bear and produced Boutxy the male and Caramelles the female. While he often pinched livestock, Pyros was lucky to never get a taste for garbage and become a “problem bear”, which usually makes euthanisation inevitable.

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Unlike some showbiz bears, Bart wasn’t rescued from the wild. He was born in Baltimore zoo on January 19, 1977, and at the age of 5 weeks, weighing 1 pound, he was purchased by film industry animal trainers Doug and Lynn Sues. A husband and wife team, they made their start in 1971 by training wolves, before expanding to racoons, foxes and cougars. The shift to bears was logical, and Bart was shipped to Salt Lake City via air freight. Doug and Lynn drove to the airport to meet their new companion, armed with bottles of high fat feeding formula to kickstart his growth right away (which they’d personally developed).

In 1977, it much easier to adopt a bear compared to the modern era of tighter regulations. When they arrived home, they petted Bart all night like a newborn baby. Doug apparently dove into training Bart with all the energy he could muster, becoming consumed by the obsession to the point of madness. Lynne, meanwhile, acted more like a calming mother figure. It was a simple praise and reward system, but according to Lynn it was already clear that Bart was “special”.

Like any actor, Bart the Bear had to work his way up the greasy pole of showbusiness. Of course, being a bear with superhuman strength, he got to the top of that pole faster than anyone else, and his acting debut was in the 1981 film Windwalker, a Native American themed Western. His role? Simply “the bear”. His moment comes when the titular Windwalker character played by Trevor Howard wakes up in his tent, only to find a huge, clawed hand draped over his shoulder. A battle with a terrifying wild bear commences, in the unpredictable wilderness of the American west.

A predictable role for a cinematic bear then, and things got worse by Clan Of The Cave Bear in 1986. The film is a prehistoric epic set 35,000 years ago, but Bart is again in savage beast mode, stumbling around a cave and killing one primitive human who decided that a 4 inch knife would work against a cave bear. Bart’s character then reaches a sorry end himself after two caveman pin him down to the rocky floor and start stabbing him repeatedly. That said, Bart’s performance was stellar, particularly the death scene.

Things improved slightly in Benji the Hunted from 1987, about a dog surviving in the wilderness of Oregon. This time, Bart arrives on the scene to give chase to Benji (the hunted), before losing interest and surviving till the end of the film. His superbly performed role was credited simply as “bear”. By 1987, Bart’s career was going full steam ahead.

Even if he wasn’t “the biggest bear” as occasionally claimed, because what would be the chances that the largest bear ever happened to become a Hollywood actor, Bart was a true giant. Bart stood 9.6 feet tall on his hind legs, and weighed 1500 pounds.

It’s all down to his Kodiak island origins. Situated on the west coast of Alaska, its bears are famous for becoming massively tall and fat. It’s a combination of natural genetics and the bountiful supply of salmon swimming around the island’s shores, meaning that they never go hungry during their teenage growth spurts, making it a bona fide bear paradise. Kodiak bears are second only to polar bears in overall bear size, significantly larger than the average grizzly bear at 600 pounds and 6.5 feet. Bart didn’t quite match the largest wild Kodiak ever recorded, a 1656lb bear shot by hunters in 1892, but was significantly larger than the average bear roaming Kodiak Island (1000lb/8ft).

At 5 weeks old, Bart weighed only 5 pounds, far less than the average human baby, but he soon caught up – big time. Take a look at this video from the 1998 Oscars hosted by Michael Myers, where Bart’s head appears to be the size of a small boulder.

Happily for Bart, he never achieved the unwanted status of washed up actor. Perhaps his most riveting performance came just 3 years before his sad death. “The Edge”, released in 1997, concerned a billionaire played by Sir Anthony Hopkins who teams up with wildlife photographer Alec Baldwin to shoot a documentary, who end up lost in the Alaskan wilderness after their plane crash lands.

After establishing camp, they find themselves pursued by a gigantic bear, portrayed with vivid intensity by seasoned showbiz veteran Bart the Bear. Unfortunately, he ends up impaled on a spear, but according to Richard Corliss’ review for Time magazine: “Bart the grizzly, who starred in 1989’s ‘The Bear’ deserves a Best Supporting Actor Award for his ferocious work“.

In total, Bart has 4 minutes, 37 seconds of screen time, but his presence looms large over the film. The film crew had to get inventive with the practical effects, as one scene involves Hopkins and company crossing a gaping ravine on a log, before a hungry Bart the Bear appears and pounces. In reality, a small wooden log is far too fragile for a bear’s weight. Instead, the special effects team constructed a lifelike artificial log designed to hold all 1500 of Bart’s pounds.

Similarly, the chase scenes didn’t actually involve Bart running for miles. The trainer utilised an “on your marks, get set, go” system where multiple short dashes were spliced together to create the illusion of a marathon.

The only time Bart the Bear ever hurt a human being was when Jean-Jacques Annaud entered his cage against the explicit orders of the trainers. Annaud was directing the 1988 film The Bear and wanted to pose for publicity pictures, but instead, Bart the Bear became confused, and took a hasty swipe which resulted in claw marks to Annaud’s backside. These wounds had to be drained with a tube for 2 whole months. Nevertheless, Annaud retained the greatest respect for Bart the Bear and didn’t hold a grudge, calling him “the John Wayne of bears”. Bart repaid him by giving the performance of his life. In fact, 50 bear actors were auditioned for “The Bear” and Bart was deemed to be the best one, so properly trained he was.

During the filming of the Edge in 1997, the only injuries were nothing to do with bears. Instead, Sir Anthony Hopkins fell into a frigid Alaskan river and had to be airlifted to hospital for hypothermia treatment. Later, he fell and slipped a disk, leaving him in pain for the rest of the shoot, but Bart the Bear never once hurt a soul.

Alec Baldwin feared that Bart was so docile and well behaved that the film wouldn’t work, that the atmosphere of terror would be impossible to create. He argued that Bart should send the director Lee Tamahori a basket of fruit every day for their skill in making him seem so aggressive.

One classic story surrounding Bart is that the Academy Awards came under serious pressure to nominate him for best supporting actor in 1988. His performance in The Bear was so astonishing that its quality had to be recognised, his ardent supporters claimed. Nevertheless, the academy sniffily claimed that only human beings may be given a reward, a member of the homo sapiens species. The nomination slammed headfirst into a wall of bureaucracy. In response, bears have boycotted the Oscars ever since…

However, Bart did get his “revenge” at the 1998 Oscars, hosted by Michael Myers when he presented the award for best special effects editing. After some words from Myers, the curtain was drawn back to reveal a gigantic-looking Bart sitting calmly with an envelope in his mouth. As Myers approached, Bart dropped the envelope in what trainer Doug Sues later said was a practical joke. Quickly, he scooped up the envelope and handed it to Myers, who had a big fat smile on his face, but was probably terrified inside. The whole performance was part of an idea to recognise animal actors and their contribution throughout Hollywood’s history. No confirmation on whether Bart the bear ran riot backstage eating all the food though…

Fans of Bart the Bear are forever divided over whether The Edge or The Bear is his defining moment as a motion picture actor. Released in 1988 and set during the 19th century, French director Jean-Jacques Annaud conceived of an epic wilderness adventure featuring a bear which adopts an orphaned young cub, stalked by a hunter who gradually recognises the value of animal life. It was perfect for the increasingly skilful Bart the bear.

However, he required heavy training for the role, because in the wild, it’s highly unnatural for a male bear to care for small cub, even one related by blood. In fact, the natural tendency is to commit cannibalism. The ingenious solution was to gift Bart a teddy bear the exact size and colour of the cub. The trainers waited patiently, calculating the precise moment, before finally introducing Bart to the real bear, which to their relief, he greeted affectionately.

In the end, the entire production hinged on Bart the Bear. Jim Henson of The Muppet Show fame was hired to create 5 animatronic bears to stand in for Bart in scenes when 100% lifelike movement was less important. However, after transportation to the film set on the slopes of the Italian Dolomites, it became obvious that the animatronics didn’t resemble the actual bears, and they ultimately made up only seconds of screen time.

In October 1998, Bart was diagnosed with cancer of the left paw and had two operations to remove the tumours. However, when the cancer returned, Bart gradually lost his strength and appetite, to the extent that he refused even pain medication.

In May 2000, Bart was euthanised after a happy life and an illustrious career. He was buried on the farm of his beloved trainers Doug and Lynn Sues.

Till the end, Bart the Bear continued to be a force for good in the world by becoming the spokesbear of the Animal Cancer Centre of Colorado State University. He was also the spokesbear for the Vital Ground Foundation, which protects endangered wildlife across the habitats of the Rocky Mountains, Kodiak Island and Gobi desert in China.

During the making of the Edge, it’s said that Sir Anthony Hopkins formed a close bond with Bart. The actors had previously collaborated on Legends Of The Fall in 1997, a historical drama set in the wilderness of Montana (Bart’s character survived this film), also starring Brad Pitt.

Hopkins would often sit inside Bart’s enclosure and “talk with him” for hours. Backstage footage even shows Hopkins wrestling Bart, having the time of his life. Whenever possible, he would star in the scenes with Bart directly in place of a stunt double. According to Lynn Sues, wife of Doug Sues the trainer: “Tony Hopkins was absolutely brilliant with Bart…He acknowledged and respected him like a fellow actor“.

The bond was so strong that Sir Hopkins became active with the same Vital Ground Foundation that Bart was a spokesbear for (founded by his trainers Doug and Lynn Sues). In 2000, he narrated this video encouraging Americans to help preserve the nation’s vast wilderness areas. In 2007, Brad Pitt joined the Vital Ground mission, having experienced the consummate professionalism of Bart himself while filming Legends of the Fall in 1997. He too released a video, discussing the dramatically decreased grizzly bear numbers in the lower 48 states, and asking viewers for donations, lending some star power to the bear-protecting mission.

Just a few weeks before Bart died in 2000, Doug Sues adopted another young bear cub. This bear quickly proved to have the same gentle temperament as Bart, and was thus named Bart the Bear 2. This Bart is almost as gigantic as the original, standing at 1300 pounds in weight and 8.6ft in length. However, there’s one thing Bart 2 had that his predecessor didn’t – a sister! Her name is Honeybump, and the two bears were orphaned at 1 year old when their mother was shot by hunters close to Paxton, Alaska.

Like the original Bart, they were given to Doug Sues by the Alaska Fish and Game Authority that collected them from the harsh Alaskan interior, where miraculously, they had survived alone for 2 days. The two Barts were unrelated, as Bart the 1st originated from Kodiak Island, but since 2005, Bart 2 has been finishing what his predecessor started.

One of the highlights of Bart 2’s career so far is Into The Grizzly Maze (2015) starring Billy Bob Thornton. It’s a typical bear attack film, where two estranged brothers reunite in Alaska and, you guessed it, go for a 2 day trek into the wilderness. The twist is that unusually, the famous actors get killed off before the jobbing B-listers. It gained atrocious reviews, but Bart 2’s performance was widely acknowledged as the highlight of the film. He was even granted a name in the credits: “red machine”.

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Like most European countries, Germany had been a bear-free zone since the early 19th century, with the last official sighting being in 1838. In 2006, however, all that changed with the arrival of a bear called JJ1, AKA Bruno, who would go on to become arguably the most famous bear in the world. Everyone had an opinion on Bruno in summer 2006 – he was either a bloodthirsty monster who slaughtered sheep for no reason, or a glorious example of large wildlife returning to Germany.

Bruno’s story started in a winter den in Italy somewhere back in 2004. He was the son of mother Jurka, who was part of the Italian bear reintroduction program. This Jurka was notorious for her aggression. She was introduced from Slovenia in the 1990s and had taken to ripping apart garbage bins, raiding rabbit hatches, and massacring sheep. She visited mountain huts and isolated villages alike, where she ate human food to her heart’s content.

Soon, she hooked up with another bear introduced from Slovenia, the comparatively calmer Jose. Over the first year of Bruno’s life, Jurka taught him every aggressive food gathering technique she knew. She was sowing the seeds of his eventual killing spree in Germany, as rather than the best roots to dig for, Jurka taught Bruno that if you only held your nerve around people, and didn’t let the honking of car horns bother you, then a limitless buffet of honey and rabbits could be yours.

By the time JJ1 left his mother to conquer his own bear territory, he was a well known troublemaker to Italian authorities. Soon though, he wouldn’t be their problem. In spring 2006, JJ1 stood high on a mountain ridge and gazed at a whole new land of opportunity – Austria.

On May 5th 2006, JJ1 was spotted on Austrian soil for the first time, in a Tyrolean village called Tosens popular with passing travellers. Most of them couldn’t believe their eyes. How could a bear be in Tyrol? They probably filed it under delusions of a drunkard, but the authorities took the sighting more seriously. Maybe it was an Italian bear, maybe it was a loose bear from the central Austrian colony, or whisper it, maybe it was a loose bear from some unknown, overlooked colony.

May 9th saw the first serious incident, as JJ1 went on a bloodthirsty rampage and slaughtered 11 sheep in the mountainous meadows near the village of Gargellen. One died instantly, while 2 bloodied and battered sheep were forced to be euthanised. The next night, JJ1 slaughtered a ram, and the night after he broke into a pigsty and trashed everything.

At this point, there was little media attention, but the authorities quietly brought in legendary bear expert Felix Knauer, veteran of the 1990s bear reintroduction in central Austria. On May 15th, he spotted several dark strands of bear hair next to some firmly embedded paw prints. Genetic testing pointed to either JJ1 or his brother JJ2.

It was now official – there was a bear on the loose in Austria. One incident on May 18th boosted the fear factor to another level, when a husband and wife were relaxing in their mountain hut and saw Bruno wander past the window casually. They reached for their camera, and seconds later, they had snapped the first ever photographs of JJ1 outside Italy.

His claws were so sharp they were noticeable from a distance, his chest and legs were like barrels, and his coat was a vibrant brown. Yet when Austrian officials heard the story, they gulped with fear. Why was a 2 year old bear walking past human beings with such little fear, as though they were daffodils?

Not long after, a gang of black grouse hunters were astonished when JJ1 lumbered past approximately 240 metres away. This was JJ1’s most relaxed period, as the authorities still hadn’t revved into action properly and there were no patrolling hunters and dogs to worry about. In the village of Lechtal, he was described as calmly walking past a garden fence on May 17th, before chilling out in a grassy field for a while. Another photo featured in newspapers was the punched in glass window of a beehive hut.

On May 18th, JJ1 was officially branded a level 3 “dangerous bear”. The Austrian bear scale originally devised by Knaur had four tiers, starting with good bear, before moving to critical bear, where action is needed but not urgently. Level 3 was a “dangerous bear”, where deterrents like rubber bullets or GPS collars are brought into action. The final, most feared tier was “very dangerous bear”, where the only solution is a swift execution.

Fortunately, JJ1 was one step ahead of the game. He had enjoyed his Austrian adventure, but it was now time to invade Germany. It was a decision that would turn him into a worldwide celebrity.

At first, JJ1 was greeted with joy, and the local media gave him the loving nickname of Petzi, after a friendly bear from a classic Danish children’s book. But by May 20th, dead sheep were already mounting in Bavaria. People began to suspect that JJ1 wasn’t a friendly, lovable bear which would care for a lost toddler in the woods after all.

Late in May, Der Spiegel gave JJ1 a new nickname – Bruno. This accompanied a regular column devoted to his atrocities called Bruno Watch, and over the next month, there was plenty to talk about.

Never before in the history of bears had media opinion changed so quickly. From May 19th to 22nd, Bruno slaughtered 11 sheep and a dozen poultry, and seemed to be particularly fond of hearts and livers. He didn’t just kill for food, he killed for pleasure and sport. JJ1 was slammed by the tabloids as a bloodthirsty monster.

Bruno was now the only topic of conversation in small villages – more specifically, the death of Bruno. Farmers couldn’t care less that brown bears were finally back on German soil after two long centuries. The problem was that Bruno’s wider celebrity was now reaching Elvis proportions. Germany was hosting the Football World Cup in 2006, and legions of drunken fans expressed their wish to meet the bear, who seemed to have arrived at the perfect time – it was like the workings of fate.

A mysterious British financier offered 2 million euros to protect Bruno, and German politicians were walking a treacherous tightrope, as they knew that the bear had captured the public’s heart (farmers aside). Because Bruno’s Italian origins hadn’t been widely publicised yet, the random appearance of a bear was truly magical. Buses crashed and planes dropped from the sky as the world’s entire attention switched to Germany.

Bruno then departed to Austria for two weeks, performing such heinous acts as ripping a plank off a wooden mountain hut. On June 5th, he re-entered Germany, and this gained him yet another nickname – the marathon bear, as the WWF realised that he was sighted in Achensee, Austria 80km away just 5 days earlier. 

On June 6th, two local lads from Tyrol thought it would be fun to go and visit the bear, and headed off in their car at 3:00am. Amazingly, they succeeded, and the next morning they led journalists to the paw prints when local police refused to believe them.

The next day, Bruno was spotted crossing a forested clearing by a hunter near Giessenback. For 30 minutes, the group watched Bruno ascend a snowy mountain slope, before vanishing down the other side. This was the perfect chance, because the steep, impassable cliffs on Bruno’s side would force him to retreat, and into a ready and waiting trap.

Unfortunately, the bear squad was too slow, and when they arrived, Bruno was already gone. Later that day, the female owner of the nearby Solsteinhütte was admiring the view when everything darkened and a giant teddy bear face suddenly stared through the window back at her. Her husband sprang to action, but all that remained were paw prints, and a sheep with a slightly injured shoulder.

Before long, half of Germany and most of its animals were on JJ1’s tail. The Bavarian government unveiled their secret weapon: four Finnish dogs guided by four Finish hunters. These were professional elk hunting dogs, whose sense of smell was supersonic. On June 10th, the gang touched down in Munich airport. The dogs’ fur was sheared to keep them cool in the hotter weather, and the hunters wielded narcotic darts.

As usual, chaos reigned from minute one, as a fresh paw print was discovered on June 10th which later turned out to be two overlapping dog prints. Every dead sheep was hysterically blamed on Bruno, including one that fell off a cliff. The Finnish team’s first mission began after reports flowed in of a destroyed rabbit cage in Tyrol. The determined Finns marched up the mountain slopes at 4:00pm, only to have their path blocked by a camera team from Austria’s national broadcaster ORF. Bruno had escaped again.

While all this was going on, JJ1/Bruno had no comprehension of how his global celebrity had swelled and how millions were watching his every move. The marathon bear’s only concern was eating enough sheep and honey to fatten up for the winter.

The obstacles to catching Bruno seemed to be neverending. On June 16th, the bear squad was forced to take shelter in a wooden mountain hut when a thunderstorm struck, despite the GPS signal flashing and indicating that the bear was agonisingly close.

The Bavarian town of Kochel became a hub of action, as later that day at 23:10, a man was walking down the immaculately swept pavement when he saw Bruno staring back at him about 70 metres away. The man escaped by slipping behind an apartment building, but when he edged into the next street, Bruno was staring at him from the exact same distance, having also changed streets. It felt like he was being stalked, and 1 hour later, the bear squad missed an open goal when Bruno was seen lazing around right outside the police station’s doors.

Either Bruno was taunting the police, or he had a guilty conscious that partially made him want to surrender. 20 minutes later, the Finnish bear crew arrived, and Bruno had vanished. The Finnish dogs tried to keep his trail, but couldn’t cope with the buzzing atmosphere of a town at night. 

Bruno was gaining power rapidly – he was not only hunting by night, but in broad daylight. He was becoming less and less fearful of people as well. With CNN and the BBC watching on, and the German public praying for Bruno’s survival, the Finnish squad received word on June 21st of a 7 chicken massacre near Brandenburg, Austria, where they found several fresh paw prints. They released their dogs, and minutes later, loud barkings sounded out as per the dogs’ training. They knew that Bruno was cornered, but as the Finns sprinted forward with their dart guns cocked, the bear slipped away just in the nick of time. Worse, they had lost one of the dogs too! It was eventually rescued by forest workers.

By June 24th, Bruno had reached the site of his eventual last stand, the base of the Rotwand mountain in Germany. Bruno approached one hiker called Gareis to within 3 metres, forcing the 3 hikers to form a close huddle to intimidate the bear. Bruno got the message and backed off, and was photographed relaxing in the lake’s waters.

The next day, he devoured a sheep in plain sight of hikers, but stood on his hind legs to investigate the onlookers only once. The owner of the nearby cabin was forced to shoo Bruno away after guests spotted him peering through the window at 20:30pm. Eventually, this spate of Rotwand sightings reached the Finns, and they knew they had him cornered.

On June 26th 2006, the bear squad finally succeeded. In the dim light of 4:15am at high summer, Bruno was shot dead by the Kümpflalm near Rotwand with 2 bullets, from a range of 150 metres.

It was a perfectly legal killing, as the hunters had received a permit from the government. The Italian environmental minster was furious, and wrote a letter to his German counterpart Werner Schnappauf, while pressing the EU to open a human rights lawsuit against Germany. The opposition social democrats even demanded Schappauf’s resignation, while environmentalist Heinke Finke asked how she could possibly lecture third would countries about saving elephants and tigers: “I haven’t got much credibility as a German when we kill our only bear“. Amid the heavy pressure, the Bavarian government kept the hunter who fired the killing bullet anonymous.

Soon afterwards, JJ1 got his revenge from beyond the grave, when he mischievously triggered a diplomatic incident. Having died on Bavarian soil, the regional Bavarian government planned to stuff JJ1’s 400 pound corpse and store it in the Munich’s Museum of People and Nature, but a furious Italy insisted that the bear be returned to Rome. The federal government of Germany took Italy’s side, and while this spat was going on, Bruno’s body remained in a freezer. Who won the argument? The Bavarian government did – JJ1 is now stuffed and on display in the Munich museum, ready to terrify visitors for eternity (unless lightning strikes and he comes back).

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Which bear is the most famous in the world? If you asked the question in summer 2020, it would undoubtedly be Papillon the escape bear, who stormed to headlines after breaking from an Italian bear sanctuary not once, but twice. However, many would argue that the most consistently famous bear is 399 of Yellowstone.

She’s a 25 year old sow born in 1996, who has mothered 14 cubs in her lifetime, and has numerous grandchildren. She’s unusually habituated to people, spending time on the roadsides by parked cars and people eating picnics. Consequently, people flock to Yellowstone park in the hundreds just to lay eyes on this prolific mother bear. Despite only rarely attacking people, her antics are constantly in the media, and she’s even a social media superstar with Facebook and Instagram accounts, run by a mysterious identity (unless we’re being cynical and it really is her).

399 was born in Pilgrim Creek, Wyoming, and she still hangs out in Wyoming today. In the 1970s, the Yellowstone population of bears plummeted to 150, but evidently, 399’s parents were among the lucky few to survive. Today the population is a far healthier 700, including 399 and her family. 399’s official bear stats include a weight of 400 pounds, and a height of 7 feet when standing on her hind legs. She has one distinctive feature, as her coat is mostly dark brown, but with two thin, blond stripes on her upper chest.

For five years after her birth, 399 was a mystery no-name bear, getting up to antics we’ll never know about. Her mother was an unknown bear who scientists had never tracked. The 399 story proper kicked off in 2001 when researchers put a VHF radio collar around her neck, and assigned her the famous number. 

399’s mothering career got off to a slow start, as she emerged from her den in spring 2004 with a single cub, which promptly vanished. The likely culprit was infanticide by an overexcited male bear. At this point, 399 was just a random bear – she had no taste of the superstardom which awaited her.

In November 2005, she established her den in Grand Teton National Park, which lies just 10km south of Yellowstone in Wyoming. This time, she found her feet and emerged in spring 2006 with three cubs in tow. Wandering down the roadsides, she attracted huge crowds, and her celebrity was finally beginning.

One of the things that fascinates people about 399 is that she has triplets more than any other bear. Normally, this puts a mother bear’s health at risk, seeing as she must provide food for all of them, but 399 always has the intelligence to make it through. In 2020, she emerged from hibernation with quadruplets.

Without her fondness for roads, 399 almost certainly wouldn’t have become the superstar bear she is today. Most grizzlies will venture onto roads occasionally, but 399 has made it a way of life. She’s unique in that she returns to Yellowstone’s roads year after year. It’s probably a survival adaption, as Yellowstone rangers believe that she may have lost a cub to a marauding male deep in the wilderness, and realised that human developments are safer. 

399 is so accustomed to the presence of humans that she allows people to photograph her, and doesn’t react strongly if they accidentally stand between her and her cubs. In 2006 and 2007 alone, hundreds of cars parked up to watch the 399 family. 399 and her cubs are commonly spotted eating berries by the roadside, or digging up roots. Sometimes, she prefers the meadows directly adjacent to roads where dandelions are plentiful. 

399 particularly favours the Oxbow Bend near Snake River in western Wyoming, meaning that photographers know exactly where to find her. From 2006-2011, she regularly taught her cubs to hunt elk on the Willow Flats near Jackson Lake Lodge, keeping visitors enraptured.

That said, she isn’t a nuisance bear who pinches garbage, as garbage control was tightened up massively in the 1970s. 399 has been spotted travelling 35 miles in one day, but her remarkable bear memory always guides her back to the old haunts like a homing device.

399 has only committed one crime against humanity and it was judged to have been natural behaviour. It happened in 2007 when school teacher Dennis VanDenbos was attending an educational conference in Jackson Lake Lodge, the famous place overlooking 399’s stomping grounds. VanDenbos went for a walk one morning, before his luck turned and he stumbled onto a 4-strong bear family feeding on an elk carcass. This was 399 and her three cubs from 2006.

The mother bear’s defensive instincts kicked in and she immediately started posturing in front of VanDenbos, who remembered his training and waved his arms. He shouted at the top of his voice, trying to scare 399 off. But as he moved slowly backwards, he stumbled and fell, and when he stood up, he was face to face with one of the bears. He instantly pushed himself to the ground, stomach first, to protect his internal organs, while pulling his arms over his head. Teeth nipped him on the back, before delivering a more powerful bite to his backside. Claws slashed at his left calf, and VanDenbos must have thought it was all over. Miraculously, he suddenly heard a human voice, of a Jackson Lake Lodge cook and horse wrangler who had been nearby. He shouted, and 399 and her cubs scampered into the woods.

Lying in the ambulance, VanDenbos radioed to say that he had provoked the attack. Ultimately, head ranger Mary Gibson Scott agreed. 399 was judged to have behaved like a normal defensive mother rather than an aggressive problem bear, and she was spared euthanasia. Since then, 399 has never attacked a human being.

In May 2008, the 2006 wave of triplets finally disbanded. The first sign was when the cubs started foraging 100 yards away from their mother. When mother 399 crossed a road, she grunted at them, an instruction they barely listened to. Eventually, they encountered a male bear, which ran off with 399 into a ravine. Two of the cubs followed her half an hour later, only for photographer Sue Cedarholm to watch them re-emerge with 399 hot on their tail, charging them away from her love nest!

The family was over, but on June 5, 2011, 399 remerged with triplets. By this point, 399’s sky high popularity had forced Grand Teton to establish the Wildlife Brigade, consisting of 16 volunteers. Its job was to stand by the roads as amazed tourists took pictures of 399 and cubs, and prevent them from getting within 100 yards. Founded in 2006, the volunteers explain to parked bear enthusiasts how easily avoidable incidents could cost the lives of the bears they love so much. They also instruct people not to feed the bears, in case they become addicted to garbage and keep coming back for more. 

In short, the sole purpose of the Brigade is to contain the chaos brought by the celebrity of 399. The funny thing is that by 2014, 399 was already deemed to be “getting old”, as rangers noticed that her teeth were very worn down. Yet she’s still thriving today.

In Yellowstone, there’s another collar-tagged bear called 610 who has copied 399’s strategy of sticking to roads. 610 also hangs around Willow Flats, and is perfectly comfortable with hundreds of passing cars and tourists. All this makes more sense when you hear that 610 is 399’s daughter.

She was one of the 3 2006 cubs, and by 2011, she had three cubs of her own, the first of 399’s cubs with a confirmed litter. Unlike the more adventurous male bears, she stuck to the place of her youth. 610 loves the roads so much that in August 2011, she caused a major traffic jam when she tucked into an elk carcass 70 metres away from the road. It was too good an opportunity for photographers to miss, and 30 cars stopped at once, while the rangers watched on to make sure that nobody went for a cuddle.

People always wonder whether mother bears recognise their adult children, but in 2011, there was a reunion when 399 and her 2 cubs walked past a traffic filled road in Grand Teton National Park, only for 610 to emerge with 2 cubs later. Over several weeks, thousands of tourists watched the mother and daughter families interact. In mid-summer, the bear families disappeared, but when they returned, 610 had 3 cubs while 399 had 2. Rangers theorised that daughter had helped out mother by adopting one of her cubs – her much younger half sister! This shot to headlines around the world under the title of “rare grizzly bear adoption”, increasing 399’s fame further. On November 28th though, a family feud erupted, when 610 and 399 started fighting over an elk carcass. They were due to enter hibernation and probably extra aggressive.

By 2017, bear 399 had lasted for 21 years, but the gravest threat yet appeared when the US federal government decided to delist grizzly bears as an endangered species. Numbers had risen to 700 in Yellowstone, but conservationists were in uproar, fearing a hunting feeding frenzy. While Montana kept grizzly hunting banned and Idaho allowed just one yearly kill, Wyoming declared open season, issuing 22 permits per year. Some hunters were salivating at the prospect of shooting 399, wanting a famous hide on their walls, calling it the ultimate kill.

Conservations like Jane Goodall launched an infiltration operation, attempting to buy up the 22 permits for themselves. It partially worked, as bear biologist Peter Mangelson acquired tag number 8. Others urged the cameras to shoot ’em with cameras, not guns.

Ultimately, Wyoming’s decision was overturned by a federal judge in Montana, but there was a big scare in December 2015, when a hunter commented on facebook that “I KILLED BEAR 399″. He even described her last moments “gasping for air as her cubs ran about”. Was he bluffing? In spring 2016, photographer Bernie Scates waited patiently in Yellowstone for 399 and her cubs to appear, and on May 10th he got his reward. It was 399’s first sighting of the new season. She wasn’t a zombie, she wasn’t riddled with bullets – she was perfectly healthy.

399 was a true supermom of a bear, but biologists had to be realistic. In early 2020, she was now 24, and she had looked quite thin and scraggly the previous winter. It’s normal for elderly bears to die during hibernation, having failed to eat enough food the previous summer as they gradually get outcompeted by younger, fitter bears.

A hushed air of anticipation fell over Yellowstone park, Wyoming, and indeed the world (except maybe North Korea). The Yellowstone winter was particularly brutal, with 11 feet of snow accumulating. But there was also a buzz of excitement, because 399 hadn’t mothered any cubs since 2016, and she had been spotted in the company of a huge 600 pound male named Bruno throughout summer 2019. Would it be boom or bust?

The first confirmed sighting of a grizzly in 2020 came on 7th March. This was a male, who always leave their hibernation dens earlier. Nobody was concerned, and on May 18th 2020, 399 was finally spotted. Better yet, she had 4 cubs! Everyone’s wildest dreams had come true. It was surprising that she had cubs at all at age 23, let alone 4 cubs. Yellowstone rangers had never seen it before.

She was first spotted where else, but Pilgrim Creek, her trustworthy haunt of 14 years. At first, 10 people stood by to watch, but by 3:30pm on May 18th, 200 bear enthusiasts were milling around. This was the 3rd time 399 had reappeared on May 18th exactly. In a previous spring, a man had burst into tears at the first sight of her.

As of late 2020, the 399 family was in a spot of bother. Her internal compass seemed to be malfunctioning, as compared to their usual Pilgrim creek haunts, the family was venturing too far south. They were reaching inhabited settlements on the flat valley, which included Teton village, but also the crowded suburbs of Jackson Hole. 

Not a place a grizzly bear wants to be, and worse, they were wandering near the Moose-Wilson Road, which is notorious for moose being killed in traffic collisions. On October 27th, one of the cubs narrowly avoided a collision itself. By Wednesday 28th, they were sighted on a ranch, and local bear enthusiast Ann Smith started sending emails en masse to Jackson Hole residents to make them drive carefully. Soon, 399 was on the wrong side of the fast-flowing snake river to usual, straying close to a painful black bear trap. 

Why was 399 leaving her normal hunting grounds? It was a poor hunting season in 2020, meaning that less elk carcasses were left behind for 399’s family to feast on – they were spotted instead eating hawthorn berries near the town of Wilson. 399 superfan Thomas Mangelsen said that she was looking fairly fit, but others insisted that she was thin. One of the cubs was walking with a slight limp.

Is the 399 family finally finished? Good news – by November 27th, they were spotted back in their traditional stomping grounds of Grand Teton National Park. Clearly, mother 399 came to her senses and corrected course. 

The harsh reality is that only 85% of bears make it to 399’s grand old age of 24. Despite making numerous cubs, up to half of 399’s may have died. The most notorious case was in September 2009. Stephen Westmoreland was walking through Bridger-Teton National Forest when he encountered bear 615, a female cub of 399’s, who was feeding on a moose carcass. From 35 metres away, 615 stood up to view the human interloper. She was said to be a shy, reclusive bear who stayed away from tents and barbecues, and this time, she gave no indication of a murderous charge.

Regardless, Westmoreland raised his rifle and shot 615 in the chest and abdomen. He didn’t use bear spray – he wasn’t carrying bear spray, but rather a deer head. One of the 2006 litter was no more. Surprisingly, the case went to trial, where Westermoreland pled self defence. By now, the “399 army” was already a force to be reckoned with, and they followed the trial avidly on the internet. It was called the OJ Simpson trial of bears, and Westermoreland was convicted of malicious killing.

Next to perish was 573, one of 399’s 2006 cubs. He was euthanised on July 3rd 2013 for killing livestock. The headlines said “taste for beef kills cub of grizzly 399”.  The most heart-breaking incident came in June 2016, when Snowy, a whitefaced cub born that year who had stolen the internet’s heart, was found dead on a road near Pilgrim Creek, clearly killed in a collision. This bear had a white head and blue-brown body, looking more like a Tibetan blue bear than her mother. Eyewitnesses said that 399 had frantically tried to help her mortally wounded offspring.

That’s the harsh bear world for you, but on a more positive note, both 610 and 399 are still alive in western Wyoming as of 2022. 

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