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Bears of the World

© Gerald Eugene Smith

There are 8 recognised species of bears in the world. One species, the American Black Bear, lives only in North America, another species, the Spectacled Bear, lives only in South America. Four species live only in Asia; the Asiatic Black Bear, the Sun Bear, the Indian Sloth Bear, and the Panda Bear. The Polar Bear is found throughout the High Arctic regions of both Eurasia and North America, and the Brown Bear (or Grizzly) is found from Europe all across Northern Asia to Western North America. Other animals, like Koala Bears or the Asiatic Bear Cats are not really bears, they are just bear-like in appearance. There are no bears in Africa, Australia or (of course!) Antarctica.

Two of the species are only distantly related to the others; the Panda Bear, thought for a long time not to be a true bear, and the Spectacled Bear, the sole surviving member of the Tremarctine family of bears, a group that lived only in the New World and included the most terrible mammalian carnivore to ever walk the Earth, the fearsome one-ton Short-Faced Bear that prowled the plains and steppes of Ice Age North America. The Spectacled Bear of today has a noticeably shorter muzzle than other bears, but is otherwise a shy and inoffensive fellow. The Panda Bear is particularly primitive and has retained a lot of raccoon-like features that the other bears have lost. Interestingly, there is a primitive raccoon living in Asia (the only one found outside of North America) called the Red Panda. It has retained a number of bear-like features that the other raccoons have lost. Thus, the odd situation has arisen whereby in some respects the Panda Bear and Red Panda are more like each other than the other members of their respective families. This was what caused the confusion over the classification of the Panda Bear (or Giant Panda) for so long.

The other six bears constitute the genus Ursus, and can be called the Ursine family of bears. These are your classic bears. The American Black Bear, the Asiatic Black Bear, the Sloth Bear and the Sun Bear constitute the "black bear" subgrouping. They are not necessarily all that closely related to each other, but they have all retained to varying degrees the basic ancestral ursine bear traits of medium size, black fur with a white collar, and tree-climbing ability and prefernce for a forest habitat. When you look at an American Black Bear, you are seeing an animal that closely resembles the common ancestor of all the Ursine bears. The Brown (or Grizzly) Bear and Polar Bear are closely related to each other, and will produce fertile offspring if bred. The Polar Bear is the newest species of the bears. They split off from the Brown Bear stock during the Ice Ages about 200,000 years ago.

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