Bear

From Freepedia

For other meanings, see Bear (disambiguation).

Bear
Image:Kodiak Brown Bear.jpg
Kodiak Brown Bear
Scientific classification
Kingdom:Animalia
Phylum:Chordata
Class:Mammalia
Order:Carnivora
Family:Ursidae
G. Fischer de Waldheim, 1817
Genera

Ailuropoda
Ursus
Tremarctos
Arctodus (extinct)

A bear is a large mammal of the order Carnivora, family Ursidae. The adjective, ursine, is used to describe things of bearlike nature.

Contents

Physical attributes

Common characteristics of bears include a short tail, excellent senses of smell and hearing, five un-retractable claws, and long, dense, shaggy fur.

Bears have a large body with powerful limbs. They are capable of standing up on their hind legs. They have broad paws, long snouts, and round ears. Their teeth are used for defense and tools and depend on the diet of the bear. Their claws are used for ripping, digging, and catching.

Habitats

Bears live in a variety of habitats from the tropics to the Arctic and from forests to snowfields. They are mainly omnivorous, although some have a more specialised diet, such as polar bears. They eat lichens, roots, nuts, and berries. They can also go to a river or other body of water to capture fish. Bears will commonly travel far for food. Hunting times are usually in the dusk or the dawn except when humans are nearby.

Some of the large species, such as the polar bear and the grizzly bear, are dangerous to humans, especially in areas where they have become used to people. For the most part, bears are shy and are easily frightened of humans. They will, however, defend their cubs ferociously.

Reproductive behaviour

The bear's courtship period is very brief. Bears reproduce seasonally, usually after hibernation. Cubs come out toothless, blind, and bald. The cubs, usually born in litters of 1–3, will stay with the mother for six months. They will be fed by milk at first and will start hunting with the mother in three months. Then, they are weaned. However, they will still remain nearby for three years. The cubs are more sexually mature at seven years. Normally, bears are very solitary and will not remain close together for long periods of time.

Image:How Bears and other Beasts may be caught with a Dart Fac simile of a Miniature in the Manuscript of Phoebus Fifteenth Century.png

Other

Many bears of northern regions are assumed to hibernate in the winter. In fact, they don't hibernate. Their body temperature sinks a moderate amount and they can be easily awakened.

Laws have been passed in many areas of the world to protect bears from hunters or habitat destruction. Bears in captivity used to be trained to dance, box, or unicycle, but it is now controversial to use animals in this way.

Bears have an average life expectancy of 25–40 years.

A brown bear is Finland`s national animal.

Polar bears are the largest type of bear, indeed one of the largest extant carnivores. Sun bears are the smallest, only a bit smaller than the average woman.

Classification

The genera Melursus and Helarctos are sometimes included in the genus Ursus. The Asiatic black bear and the polar bear used to be placed in their own genera, Selenarctos and Thalarctos.

A number of hybrids have been bred between black, brown and polar bears (see ursinae hybrids).

Evolutionary relationships

Bears are members of the Order Carnivora, Sub-Order Caniformia, and Family Ursidae. Other members of the Caniformia include wolves and other dog-like mammals (Family Canidae), weasels, skunks, and badgers (Family Mustelidae), raccoons (Family Procyonidae), and walruses (Family Odobenidae), seals (Family Phocidae), and sea lions (Family Otariidae). Although bears are often described as having evolved from a dog-like ancestor, their closest living relatives are the pinnipeds (walruses, seals, and sea lions).

The origins of the bears can be traced back to the raccoon-sized, dog-like Cephalogale from the middle Oligocene and early Miocene (approximately 20-30 million years ago) of Europe. Cephalogale gave rise to a lineage of early bears, the genus Ursavus. This genus radiated in Asia and ultimately gave rise to the first true bears (genus Ursus) in Europe, 5 million years ago. Extinct bear genera includes Arctodus, Agriarctos, Agriotherium, Plionarctos and Indarctos.

Although there has previously been much discussion as to whether the Giant Panda belongs to the bear family or the raccoon family, recent DNA analyses have shown that the Giant Panda is a member of the Family Ursidae and as such is more closely related to other bears. The status of the Red Panda remains uncertain, but many experts, including Wilson and Reeder, classify it as a member of the bear family. Others place it with the racoons in Procyonidae or in its own family, the Ailuridae. The many similarities between the two pandas are thought to represent convergent evolution for feeding primarily on bamboo.

Bears in mythology

Image:Coabxvi.png There is some evidence for prehistoric bear worship, see Arctic, Arcturus, Great Bear, Berserker, Kalevala. Anthropologists such as Joseph Campbell have regarded this as a common feature in most of the fishing and hunting-tribes. The prehistoric Finns, along with most fenno-ugric peoples, considered the bear as the spirit of one's forefathers. This is why the bear was a greatly respected animal, with several euphemistic names. There has been evidence about early bear worship in China and among the Ainu culture as well.

Numerous cities around the world have adopted the bear as a symbol, notably the Swiss capital Bern, which takes its name from the German for bear, bär. The bear is also the name-emblem of Berlin. Bears are a common symbol of heraldry. In the arms of the bishopric of Freising (illustration, right) the bear is the dangerous totem animal tamed by Saint Corbinian and made to carry his civilized baggage over the mountains: the allegory of the civilizing influence of Christianity is inescapable. A bear also features prominently in the legend of Saint Romedius, who is also said to have tamed one of these animals and had the same bear carry him from his hermitage in the mountains to the city of Trento.

In addition, the Proto-Indo-European word for bear, *hr̥ktos (ancestral to the Greek arktos, Latin ursus, Welsh arth (c.f. Arthur), Sanskrit ṛkṣa, Hittite hartagga) seems to have been subject to taboo deformation or replacement (as was the word for wolf, wlkwos), resulting in the use of numerous unrelated words with meanings like "brown one" (English bruin) and "honey-eater" (Slavic "medved"). Thus four separate Indo-European language groups do not share the same PIE root. The theory of the bear taboo is taught to almost all beginning students of Indo-European and historical linguistics: the putative original PIE word for bear is itself descriptive, because a cognate word in Sanskrit is "rakshas", meaning "harm, injury" [1].

External links

Bears in popular culture

Bears, usually anthropomorphized, appear frequently as characters in popular culture; see List of fictional bears.

Some bears have been famous in their own right, like the bear that the U.S. president Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt refused to shoot in Mississippi. That bear became the prototype for the Teddy bear, which is a stuffed animal toy;

In the stock market, a bear market is a period of declining prices. Pessimistic forecasting or negative activity is said to be bearish, and one who expresses bearish sentiment is a bear. Its opposite is a bull market, and bullish sentiment from bulls.

Many cultures regard bears as possessing healing powers. The peoples of China, Japan and Korea use bears' body parts and secretions (notably their gall bladders and bile) as part of traditional Chinese medicine. This has had a major impact on populations of bears around the world. Thousands of bears are farmed for their bile in China, Vietnam and Korea. They are kept in appalling conditions and usually have bile drained from their gall bladders using catheters inserted into their abdomen or with hypodermic needles. There is no evidence to suggest that farming bears has reduced pressures on wild bear populations. Indeed the farming of bears in China has led to a huge increase in consumption of bear bile since the 1980's with many people prepared to pay very high prices for the 'superior' bile of a wild bear.

The bear, the bruin, or specific types of bears are popular nicknames or mascots, e.g. for sports teams.

The constellations Ursa Major and Ursa Minor represent bears.

In CB slang, "bear" (or "smokey," in reference to Smokey Bear) is a nickname for law enforcement.

In Homosexual Slang, the term "Bear" refers to male individuals who posess physical attributes much like a bear. Such as, a heavy build, abundant body hair, and commonly facial hair.

Microsoft Bear is an unofficial mascot hidden in Windows 3.1 and Windows 95.

Further reading

Wikibooks has a Dichotomous Key related to this taxon:
  • Bears of the World, Terry Domico, Photographs by Terry Domico and Mark Newman, Facts on File, Inc, 1988, hardcover, ISBN 0816015368
  • The Bear by William Faulkner


See also

Retrieved from "http://en.freepedia.org/Bear.html"


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