Black Bears: The Most Common Bear in North America

American black bears are the smallest and most common bear in North America. They are highly adaptable, with a diet that includes honey and moose.

Transcript

00:00American black bears are the most common bear in North America and can be found from

00:09northern Mexico through the US to northern Canada. They are smaller than polar bears

00:17and brown bears which also makes them the smallest of North America's three bears.

00:21Black bears are about three feet tall at the shoulder when standing on all fours and up to

00:28seven feet tall when standing upright on two legs. Males can be up to 60% bigger than females

00:36and weigh up to 660 pounds. Black bears are usually black as their name suggests but

00:44their coats may also be brown, cinnamon or even white. This coat variation means they're

00:53occasionally mistaken for brown bears especially where the ranges of the two

00:58species overlap. To help tell them apart the US National Park Service notes that black bears

01:05do not have a pronounced shoulder hump like brown bears do and their shoulders are lower than their

01:11rumps when standing on all fours. Black bears also have straighter faces, taller ears and shorter more

01:19curved front claws. They use these claws to scale trees and access food. Black bears are omnivores

01:29and most of their diet is made up of insects, nuts, berries, grasses and other vegetation.

01:38They are not active predators and only hunt mammals such as young deer when the opportunity presents itself.

01:45But a black bear is no slouch either and can run at up to 35 miles per hour if needed.

01:53Bears often avoid encounters with people and do not normally harm humans. However, they occasionally attack

02:02to defend their cubs or food and on extremely rare occasions kill humans to eat them. Even so,

02:10bears have far more reason to fear humans. Black bears in the forest they lived in rapidly declined

02:17after Europeans settled in North America and they are still regularly hunted by humans today.

02:22However, greater protections has enabled the bear population to slowly recover.

02:28American black bears are not currently threatened with extinction and their population is estimated to be

02:36twice as large as all other bear populations on earth.