Is the name grizzly a generic name for brown bear? Is the Eurasian brown bear also a grizzly? We have just returned from a holiday from Slovenia and the brown bear appears to have its home there. When asked if this is about the grizzly, we didn’t really get a clear answer. Research on the internet tells me that it is about the Eurasian brown bear. Further investigation shows that in North America the different types of brown bears are referred to by the term grizzly. I already know that the brown bear is not a black bear, although black bears can also have all colors. The big difference is in the hump and muscle mass between their shoulders, typical of the grizzly. Their behavior is also completely different. Grizzlies (once adults) do not climb trees, black bears are real tree climbers. Does the Eurasian brown bear have a hump between its shoulders? Does he act like a grizzly bear?
Answer
Hi Vanessa, it’s actually the other way around: all Grizzlies are brown bears or the same species with the scientific name: Ursus arctos, the brown bear. In Eurasia, the brown bear is slightly smaller than its American counterparts and therefore they are considered as different subspecies: The grizzly, Urus arctos horribilis, is larger than the brown bear (which is then called Ursus arctos arctos), shows the hump at the height of the shoulder blades and is considered more dangerous and a little more aggressive than our Brown bear. Since we usually take the ‘height at the withers’ (height of the animal on four legs at the height of the shoulder blades/front legs) as size for ‘four-legged friends’, that hump also makes a difference. The Americans also use the difference between Grizzly and Brown bear, depending on the size and the hump, but in fact know an even bigger one: the Kodiak bear, Ursus arctos middle dorffi, which is slightly larger than the Grizzly, but is still a brown bear, Ursus arctos. The Kodiak bear is more similar in model to the standard Brown Bear because it has a much less noticeable hump than the Grizzly, but it is a lot bigger than our Brown Bear.
Dominick
Answered by
drs. Dominick Verschelde
Biology, Zoology, Marine nematology, Systematics and taxonomy
http://www.ugent.be
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