Why grizzly?
The pale tips to its brown hairs give it a frosted, grizzled look.
Northern forest
Grizzly bear
Ursus arctos horribilis
A big brown bear with a hump over its shoulders, a dished face and pale-tipped fur.
- Size
- About 2m long, and up to 350kg
- Look for it
- April to November
- Where
- Mountains and forests of western Canada, Alaska and the north-west United States
Lumbers after you, and can gallop. Move your pointer and see.
When to look
Grizzly bear
Good to know
Six things about the grizzly bear
A hump of muscle
The hump on its shoulders is muscle, which powers its front legs for digging.
A long winter sleep
It spends five to seven months in a den without eating or drinking, living on its fat.
As fast as a horse
For all its bulk, a grizzly can run at 35 miles an hour.
A superb nose
Its sense of smell is thought to be many times better than a bloodhound's.
It eats almost anything
Roots, berries, moths, nuts and salmon: a grizzly eats whatever is in season.
The real thing
Photos of the grizzly bear
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Photos are from Wikimedia Commons, used under the free licences shown. They have been resized, and cropped where they appear in link previews.
How to spot one
In Yellowstone, scan the open hillsides at dawn and dusk with binoculars. In Alaska, bears gather at salmon rivers in July.
How to help
In bear country, people keep food locked away so that bears never learn to raid camps. A bear that gets used to human food rarely survives.
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