Cantabrian brown bear

Cantabrian brown bear refers to a population of Eurasian brown bears (Ursus arctos arctos) living in the Cantabrian Mountains of Spain. Females weigh, on average, 85 kg but can reach a weight of 150 kg. Males average 115 kg though can weigh as much as 200 kg. The bear measures between 1.6 – 2m in length and between 0.90 -1m at shoulder height. In Spain, it is known as the Oso pardo cantábrico and, more locally, in Asturias as Osu. It is timid and will avoid human contact whenever possible. The Cantabrian brown bear can live for around 25–30 years in the wild.

Believed to have originated in Asia, the brown bear (Ursus arctos, L. 1758) spread across the Northern Hemisphere, colonising much of the Eurasian land mass as well as North America. Ursidae experts are continuing debate on the scientific classification of bears, of which there are currently eight recognised species although some experts recognise more subspecies. In the early 20th century, Cabrera (1914) considered the Cantabrian brown bear to be a distinct subspecies of European brown bear, Ursus arctos arctos, (in itself a classification currently under debate) and named it Ursus arctos pyrenaicus (Fischer, 1829), characterised by the yellow colouring of the points of its hair and by its black paws. Since then however, phylogenetic and research has led to the general scientific consensus that the European brown bear is not a separate subspecies. These recent studies have also found that the European populations fall into two major genetic lineages; an eastern and a western type. The Cantabrian brown bear forms a part of the western type, the effective barriers of the ice sheets of the Alps and the Balkans having directed the spread of the brown bear respectively, north and eastwards and south and westwards. A further distinction of two clades has been made within the western lineage following post-glacial recolonisation after the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM); one consisting of the bear populations of Southern Scandinavia, the Pyrenees and Cantabrian Mountains of Northern Spain and the other consisting of the bear populations of the Southern Alps, the Apennines, the Dinaric Alps, the Rila Mountains, the Rhodope Mountains and the Stara Planina mountains. This leaves the remnant population of brown bears in the south of Sweden as the nearest relatives of the Cantabrian brown bear. The last indigenous, reproductive female in the Pyrenees, Canelle, was shot by a hunter in 2004. Brown bears from Slovenia are now being introduced to the Pyrenees.

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