Kamchatka brown bear
| Kamchatka brown bear Russian: Камчатский бурый медведь |
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Order: | Carnivora |
| Suborder: | Caniformia |
| Family: | Ursidae |
| Genus: | Ursus |
| Species: | Ursus arctos |
| Subspecies: | U. a. beringianus |
| Trinomial name | |
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Ursus arctos beringianus Middendorff, 1851 |
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| Ursus arctos beringianus range map. | |
| Synonyms | |
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kolymensis Ognev, 1924 |
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kolymensis Ognev, 1924
mandchuricus Heude, 1898
piscator Pucheran, 1855
The Kamchatka brown bear (Ursus arctos beringianus), also known as the Far Eastern brown bear, is a subspecies of brown bear native to the Anadyrsky District, the Kamchatka Peninsula, Karaginskiy Island, the Kuril Islands, the coastal strip west of the Sea of Okhotsk southward to the Stanovoy Range and the Shantar Islands. Outside the former Soviet Union, the subspecies occurs in Saint Lawrence Island in the Bering sea. It is closely related to one clade of brown bears in Alaska and northwest North America, and is thought to be the ancestor of the Kodiak bear.
It is a very large bear, the largest in Eurasia, with a body length of 2.4 metres, to 3 metres tall on hind legs and a weight of 650 kg (1433 lbs) or more. It is nearly the size of the Kodiak bear; however, the skull is broader than that of the Ussuri brown bear, and compared to that of the Kodiak bear, the breadth of the skull is much greater in proportion to its length, the anterior narial opening is much shorter, and the molars differ in relative size and form. The greatest skull length for males is 40.3–43.6 cm and 25.8–27.7 cm wide, while the skulls of females measure 37.2–38.6 cm in length and 21.6–24.2 cm in width. Fur colour is predominantly dark brown with a violet tint. Light coloured individuals are rarely encountered.
In the summer period they feed on blueberries, crowberries, humpback salmon, and steelhead. In autumn, they eat nuts from nut-pines and mountain ash, and fish. In times of famine they eat dead fish or marine mammals, berries, and graminoid vegetation.
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Wikipedia