Grizzlies

Grizzly bear and man

The grizzly bear weighs up to 500 kg and, standing on its hind legs, reaches three meters in height.

Today, grizzlies are protected and live mainly in US national parks: Yellowstone, Mount McKinley and Glacier Park, where grizzlies are relocated to other US states. In some places, grizzlies have multiplied so much that they are allowed to hunt seasonally.

Grizzlies are one of the largest and most ferocious North American predators. The scientific name of this subspecies, horribilis, translates as "terrible, terrible." In the old days, grizzlies used to be described as a terrible and fierce animal; they said that he was not afraid of man - on the contrary, he went straight to her, on horseback or on foot, armed or unarmed. The grizzly bear population declined significantly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when they began to be mass-shot by farmers to protect themselves from attacks on livestock.

The grizzly bear, a typical brown bear, for example, hibernates and feeds mainly on plant food. Only in early youth the grizzly bear can climb trees, but easily crosses wide rivers. Skillfully catches fish. Grizzlies also like to ruin hives and eat honey.

It has powerful jaws - the force of the bite can reach 230 kg. His tail is shorter than that of an ordinary brown bear, and his claws are more powerful - up to 15 cm. His shoulders, neck and abdomen are covered with dark brown, lighter hair at the ends, which gives his fur a grayish hue; hence the name - grizzly means "gray, gray".

The structure of the body and appearance of the grizzly bear is very similar to the usual brown bear, but, in general, larger, heavier, more awkward and stronger than him. One of the characteristic features of a grizzly bear is its size: while an ordinary bear rarely reaches 2.2 m in length, the size of a grizzly bear is usually 2.4-2.5 m, and it weighs up to 450 kg.

Once a grizzly bear was distributed from Alaska to Texas and northern Mexico, at the beginning of the XXI century it is found only in Alaska and western Canada (Yukon, west of the Northwest Territories and Alberta, British Columbia). Isolated populations have survived in the Rocky Mountains in northern Idaho, western Montana, and northwestern Wyoming, as well as in the northern Cascade Mountains in Washington State.