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Thanks!
[This message was edited by mod_kelly on 06-02-04 at 11:53 PM.]
[This message was edited by mod_kelly on 06-11-04 at 12:24 PM.]
well...i dont really have a question about a grizzly but i have always woundered about their cousin, the kodiak bear. if its possible could you state the approximate raw power of the kodiak's forearms and also their bite force...Thanks
I have a few more questions for you. Please only answer these if no one else asks a question - I've asked enough and don't want to monopolize the board.
1. Are bear sprays effective against grizzlies? How do they work?
2. What's the greatest danger that grizzly cubs face in the wild?
3. What's the biggest misconception people have about grizzlies?
4. Have you ever encountered a grizzly? If so, what was it like?
5. How do grizzlies find and court one another during the mating season?
I understand that the bears and other wildlife filmed in Grizzly Encounters had probably never seen a human before. Given the unprdictability of bears and how fiercely they compete for food, especially say, a fish out of the water in possession of another creature. Why didn't the bear become aggressive with Andreas in the surprise encounter? He was curious, yes, but the fish was on the land and he was coming to feed. It surprises me that the bear did not posture and try to intimidate Andreas from the food.
What a thrill to see the grizzly bears of Alaska again. I had the pleasure of visiting them on Admiralty Island years ago as well as inland on their mainland feeding ranges. You have all had the priviledge of seeing the most spectacular bear footage I have seen to date.
What is the biggest bear ever seen?.....also, I remember seeing a show about a bear who did movies and has passed away...seena picture and he was huge....was he the biggest bear ever to do film?
I've heard somewhere that some brown bears have recently been observed hunting in packs, an abormal social behavior for them, who are normally soitary animals. Do you have any more information on this? Is this abnormal behavior linked with a negative impact on their species, or is it just an isolated, unprovable report from someone?
corysmistress asks "Do the bears sleep the whole winter through without getting out of their dens?"
Generally bears will hibernate the entire winter. They are the only animal able to survive half a year or more without eating, drinking or defecating. Their energy is supplied mainly from stored fat reserves. The fatter the bear at the onset of hibernation, the less lean body mass it burns during the winter. Fluids and amino acids are derived by recylcing products that are normally discreted as urine. Bone does not deteriorate despite inactivity. This process is so efficient that bears rarely die in dens. So it is very rare for a bear to leave its den during hibernation.
crocodile8 wants to know the approximate raw power of the kodiak's forearms and also their bite force...
The exact amount of the striking power of their forearms is not precisely known. However, one close look at the large lump behind the shoulders, which is pure muscle, makes it one of the most powerful, striking bears in the world. I believe they would be the second most powerful to a polar bear since kodiak bears can grow 10 feet long and weigh over 1,000 pounds.
Grizzly bears are very intelligent. Imagine being able to move with ease within a home range of 100s of miles and a wide variety of habitat. They're able to travel from alpine food sources, to estuaries, to berry patches, to salmon spawning sites, visiting each site exactly when that particular food source is available to them. I have often heard grizzly bears disguised as an amazingly sensitive nose attatched to a huge stomach. I think they're very intelligent and I respect them in their position at the top of the food chain.
horakti asks, "In your opinion, should grizzlies be allowed to repopulate areas where they've been exterminated?"
Yes, I believe they should. Other than being one of nature's most magnificent animals, they play an important role in the web of nature. Grizzlies are the main animal earth movers in the high country and across many of the lower meadows and floodplains, where their claws recontour the ground. They plant seeds and release scarce nitrogen from lower soil levels. Vegetation such as glacier lillies grow better and produce more seeds in swath dug by bears, which can also eat and spread seeds from as many as 70,000 berries a day. You can view grizzlies as nature's gardeners and ecosystem accelerators. We still have a lot of work to do in terms of educating people about how to survive with wildlife, and the grizzly bear is one of those species which I believe we can manage with success.
horakhti asks, "Do grizzlies rely more on speed or stealth to catch large prey?"
For their size, grizzlies can run at speeds of 35 mph to catch their prey. A burst of speed like that, chasing down animals racing through swampy areas, is enough to catch many of the large ungulates. Although a large portion of the grizzly bear diet consists of vegetation, roots, berries, insects and fish, they will consume large, hooved mammals such as moose, caribou and elk. After making a kill, it will not waste the remaining food, but will sometimes stockpile carcasses and cover them with pine needles and leaves to finish later.
I hope I'm not posting too many questions, but this guy I know named Jerry says he is taking a kayaking trip to Alaska in August, and will kayak around the many inlets and lakes On Sitka Island, a very remote island in the Alaskan archipelago that are said to have a far higher bear population than human one. He said that he is going to be cautious, and carry a firearm with him. ...I love animals, and couldn't stand the thought of him carrying a gun around in that untouched wilderness. I asked him if he could please reconsider and just carry bear mace, but he told me that bear mace isn't always effective against an all-out bear attack, and that the gun is only for a worst-case scenario, and that he would never shoot a bear unless the bear was on him, and he had to in order to save his own life. I don't have anything against that, but I just feel that if you're willingly going to travel to and camp among potentially dangerous animals, putting yourself in that danger, that you shouldn't endanger the animal's life as well as your own, by giving them the option of taking away your option of leaving them be. ...Am I making any sense?
susan_o0o asks about Andreas Kieling's close encounter with the grizzly.
I too was nervous watching such a close encounter, but Andreas has spent months researching the behavior of the bears he was going to film. With adequate preparation, once you learn the personalities of the bears, as in which are the most aggressive and territorial versus those that are not. This was a very old bear with a very full stomach who acted like he was unfamiliar with humans and therefore was not threatened and did not show any signs of aggression or fear. However, no one but a trained expert should ever intentionally place themselves in close proximity to bears.
mdre22 asks "What is the biggest bear ever seen? Who was the biggest to do film?"
I have heard stories of bears weighing in the neigborhood of 1,500 pounds. I'm not familiar with the trained bear that you're talking about, but there is a lady named Ruth La Varge who works with a large grizzly bear on a program to set aside land for brown bears in southern California. The July issue of National Geographic has some stories that might answer your question. I think you'll find the largest bear sightings around Kodiak because of the high protein and fat-rich diet of salmon that are in such abundance for these bears to feed upon.
