While most "Black bears" are actually black, there are sections of North America where up to 60% of them are brown. These "Cinnamon" bears are born frequently into litters containing black cubs also. White spots turn up occasionally on the chest of either color phase.
But black and brown aren't the only color schemes that the black bear is offered in. In the glaciers of the Saint Elias mountain range in southeastern Alaska, there is a bluish color phase known as...understandably...the "Glacier" bear. The blue bears have become increasingly rare because, it is thought, of interbreeding with the more common brown and black color phases.
The most bizarre and interesting color phase, though, is the one shown here...the Kermode bear. This bear was first described to science in 1905 by Dr. William Hornaday of the New York Zoo. He considered them a separate species and named them Ursus kermodei after a Canadian colleague, Francis Kermode, who had worked tirelessly to secure specimens and information. It wasn't until 1928 that the Kermode bear was re-classified as a geographic race of the "Black bear".
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I've sent you an email on the CR way to post you-tube video's ( computer retarded,as Joseph calls me..LOL..) I had to sit thru lesson 1 with my 12 year-old rolling his eyes and speaking to me as if I was 6....
Wade, thank you. The video was very good. I did notice that they are more champagne than pure white, and the narrator did say that their skin and eyes are black.
Mary Ann
The Kermode bear, Ursus americanus kermodei, is not a color phase of the black bear, it is a subspecies. 90% of Kermode bears are black. Only 10% are white. They carry the same gene as the golden retriever. Francis Kermode was the director of the British Columbia Museum Of Natural History in Victoria. The Stanley Park Zoo in Vancouver used to have white Kermode bears and polar bears. The zoo was closed and the bear grottos are all that's left. They are pathetically small.
I don't think my message went through so I'm sending it again with a little more info. The Kermode bear is not a color phase, it is a subspecies of the North American black bear, Ursus americanus kermodei. 90% of Kermode bears are black. 10% are white. Francis Kermode was the director of the British Columbia Museum Of Natural History in Victoria. Kermode bears live on the Queen Charlotte Islands and the white ones carry the same gene as golden retrievers. Have you ever heard of British Columbia's local sea monster "cadborosaurus" or "Caddy"? Well in 1937 in Naden Harbour whaling station in the Queen Charlotte Islands a strange animal was found in the belly of a whale. It was photographed and samples were sent to Victoria and examined by Francis Kermode, who wrongly dismissed them as having come from a fetal baleen whale. The samples were lost after that, but the photograph still exists. It looks like it has Joe Camel's head. http://www.bcscc.ca/cadborosaurus.htm
Anonymous,
I suggest the folks at the Fisheries station in Nanaimo, should have been whipped for "misplacing" the samples. What a terrible shame.
Wade
There's a beautiful light orange colored bear in the Orange County Zoo named Samson. He's some sort of local celebrity, I think because he was discovered in somebody's hot tub back when the policy was to destroy any bear which encroaches on a populated area. Children raised $400,000 to build his exhibit, which looks like a square acre enclosed in a wire mesh fence to me. Sy Montgomery wrote a book titled Search for the Golden Moon Bear, about the golden color phase of the Asian black bear, and another color morph which the author called "proto panda" , because it has panda like markings (eye patches and dark ears with a pale face). Sy Montgomery also wrote Pink Dolphin of the Amazon.
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