Rare Bears

Rare Bears. . , Bearly Recognizable: , While bears come in a wide variety of sizes and colors, all bears have some things in common. Large, powerful, well-furred bodies, long snouts with super-sensitive noses, broad paws with sharp claws and tiny tails are features common to every one of the world's bears. But that's where the similarities end. The world's eight bear species range in size from the 5-foot, 150-pound Sun bear, to 10-foot, 1,600-pound Alaskan Brown bears, there is even a record of a Polar bear reaching more than 11 feet in height and 2,100 pounds in weight. That's a lot of bear! Bears come in a huge range of coat colors as well. When it comes to color varieties, bears always have something "bruin". In addition to Black bears, Brown bears and Polar bears (which appear white), Sun bears have golden yellow fur on their chests and "Moon bears" (Asiatic Black bears) have white crescent patches of fur on their chests. There are even Brown bears with blueish fur known as "Himalayan Blue bears", Black bears with blueish fur known as "Glacier bears" and Black bears with white fur known as "Spirit bears". And don't forget about Giant pandas , they're black and white and cute all over!, ❶ Gobi Bear , A subspecies of the brown bear (Ursus arctos) that is found in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia. , They are listed as critically endangered. , The population included only 30 adults in 2009, and is separated by enough distance from other brown bear populations to achieve reproductive isolation., ❷ Glacier Bear , Also known as blue bears, are uncommon color variants of black bears. (Ursus americanus) with fur that ranges from white to gray to black with silver-tipped guard hairs., Glacier bears are mostly found in Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve. , They are among the most rare bears in the world, with little concrete information known about them or their numbers., ❸ Tibeten Blue Bear , The Tibetan blue bear (Ursus arctos pruinosus) is a subspecies of brown bears native to the eastern Tibetan Plateau. These bears are known as the Himalayan blue bear, Himalayan snow bear, Tibetan brown bear, or the horse bear. , Probably the least known and least studied of all brown bear subspecies. , Evidence indicates that the Tibetan blue bear is very shy of human contact and therefore very seldom observed., ❹ Kermode Bear , Spirit bears aka Kermode bears (Ursus americanus kermodei) are a subspecies of the North American black bear with a rare recessive gene that makes their fur white or cream. Spirit bears are not albino. They have pigment in their skin and eyes, which wouldn't be the case with albinos. Spirit bears are found only in the Great Bear Rainforest, a 6.4 million ha ecosystem on British Columbia's north and central coast. , The First Nations communities that have lived in the region for thousands of years call the spirit bear moskgm'ol, which simply means 'white bear', and view the animal as sacred., ❺ Polar, Grizzly Bear hybrid , Polar Bears and Grizzly Bears have successfully mated on a few occasions, creating a hybrid species unofficially dubbed a "Pizzly Bear." While the climate crisis may expedite the number of Pizzly Bears (the changing climate is causing Grizzly Bears to move north and Polar Bears to move south, resulting in more interactions between the species), Polar Bears are marine mammals; Grizzlies are terrestrial. But as the Arctic warms, sea ice is shrinking and the tundra is expanding. And the bears' disparate populations are meeting, mating and creating a new species hybrid that's capable of reproducing.