Bad News Bears

As you may or may not know, I am spending another season collecting bear hair in Northwestern Montana. Every so often, whilst we are burgling the fur clumps left on our rub trees, a park visitor pops around the corner and asks if we can tell what kind of bear left that hair? The honest answer is no, not really. Black bears can be any number of colors, and at the end of the day, it is hard to tell for certain their fur from any shade of grizzly, unless it is that deep blue-black hue. That said, we can (more or less) safely say what kind of bear hair we are not collecting. In keeping with a series, here is:

A (partial) Guide to Recognizing Your Bears


 


Brown Bear:
Range: Northern North America, Europe, Asia, Wall Street.
Diet: Lots of vegetation, berries, fruit, carcasses, fish, grubs. Mammals great and small, if it feels like a chase. Grizz eats whatever the hell it wants.

American 

Black Bear:  

Range: Behind you!

Diet: Mostly vegetation, berries, roots, grubs, fruit, honey. Also, carrion, trash, dog food, baking supplies, anything they can get their paws clawed on.

 
                             
  Polar Bear:
Range: The Arctic.
Diet: Ringed, harbor, bearded, harp, and hooded seals, other blubbery marine mammals, including the occasional beluga whale. I said whale! 
Random fact: The biggest in the family, polar bears are so well insulated their body heat does not register on an infrared devise. This makes them excellent spies.

Asiatic Black Bear:

Range: Mountain and tropical forests of Southern Asia, Northeast India, etc.

Diet: See American Black Bear.

Random Fact: These guys are largely nocturnal, and are called Moon Bears because of that crescent-shaped chest bling they sport. Dandies.

Get it together, Sun!. You look like a Shar Pei with heat stroke.

Sun Bear:

Range: Rain forests in various Southeast Asian countries.

Diet: Typical jungle fare: honey, insects, veg, fruit, rodents.

Random Fact: Rarest. Smallest. Most ornery. Sun bears love slurping up honey and termites with their  crazy long, skinny, semi-creepy tongue.

  ~ ~ ~Intermission~ ~ ~

Hello, is it me you're looking for?

  Sloth Bear:
  Range: Forest and grasslands of India,
  Nepal, Bangladesh, etc.
  Diet: Mostly termites and ants (check out
  that schnoz), but anything will do.
  Random Fact: The Sloth Bear's Lionel
  Ritchie-esque   shaggy faux-mullet ear/neck
  fur help keep little insects away. And that
  ain't the half of it. They have long tongues,
  can close their nostrils and curl their lips
  over their noses, and lose their front top
  canines,  all to better suck up insects.
  Apparently their aggressive hoovering
  can be heard 300 meters away.

                                      Not amused

  Spectacled Bear:
  Range: Northern and Western South
   America.
  Diet: Fallen fruits, palm nuts, orchid
  roots, honey, sugarcane, cactus.
  Random Fact: Closest living relatives
  of the epic Short-Faced Bear of
  Pleistocene fame. Named for face
  markings vaguely reminiscent of
  corrective eye wear.

Ready for my close-up

  









  Panda Bear:  
   Range: Southeast China. 
   Diet: Bamboooooo! Only bamboo.
   International poster bear for adorable.
   

Care Bear:   
Range: Kingdom of Caring, Care-A-Lot, the Forest of Feelings, my first-grade birthday cake.                               Diet: Sugared cloud cones, the hopes and dreams of young children, mainlined love.

                                                     Bear Grass:                Range:Western North America                   Diet: Water, sunlight.

  



Bear Grylls:
Range: Atop Mount Everest, north-Atlantic icebergs, jungle ditches, free falling through mid-air, under piles of leaves, up in trees, on book stands everywhere.  
Diet: Raw organs, insects great and small, urine, deer shit, real vowels, and basically whatever it takes to SURVIVE!








 


Gummi Bear:  
Range: Happy bellies and cavity-ridden mouths worldwide.  
Diet: You're not on one if you're eating these bears.


 



  

The Gay Man's Bear: 

Range: San Fransisco, Miami, D.C., New York,  Seattle, worldwide. 
Diet: Listen, what a bear eats in the privacy of his own home is no body's business but his own. 









 





Chicago Bear:  
Range: Chicago and fields away. 
Diet: Coors Old Style, chicken wings, deepdish, haters. Just check The Fridge. Ha! Then please, watch this!