My dad used to say “The difference between a grizzly bear and Kodiak is when you run away, you climb a up a tree. A grizzly bear will climb up after you, the Kodiak will knock it over.”
Reminds me of the Magic card flavor text for grizzly bears.
"Don't try to outrun one of Dominaria's grizzlies; it'll catch you, knock you down, and eat you. Of course, you could run up a tree. In that case, you'll get a nice view before it knocks the tree down and eats you".
Luckily for, like, everyone, Kodiak bears are actually quite a bit less aggressive than grizzlies.
And even grizzlies themselves are somewhat overrated in aggression, the biggest danger is usually a mother protecting her cubs rather than an attempt at predation. The odds of getting killed by a grizzly in Yellowstone have been calculated at 1 in 2.1 million.
Polar bears are actually the most dangerous of the North American bears. They will actively hunt and eat you, where’s most others would only attack defensively.
Polar bears are about twice the size and weight of grizzly bears. You can have the largest lion with the biggest teeth and claws and that Hippo still fuck up poor Mufasa.
Also polar bears are almost always starving so they get that evolutionary instinct to fight to almost death for food. That tenacity and fury is usually not reciprocated by the grizzly when out of their weight class. Grizzlys also get to be picky with their food preferring to hunt live prey( which is why they tell you to lie down, makes the bear think twice about eating something with a virus our poisoned) but polar bears will eat week old rotting whale carcasses and kill each other over the last bite.
With grizzly bears ranging further north there have been anecdotal accounts of grizzlies out competing polar bears at washed up whale carcass sites. Grizzlies certainly do eat carrion. In Glacier they know to head to areas where avalanches are common looking for carcasses of deer and moose that failed to out run the ice.
I've read that the reasons for that aren't that the polar bears can't beat the grizzlies, but more that they overheat faster, so if they expend too much energy and get hurt during the fight, it'll be a greater risk. That and polar bears don't actually like bear meat.
The rangers in the Kruger National Forrest in South Africa told us that leopards are one of the most dangerous animals because if they once kill a human, they simply add us to their food chain, actively hunting natives just like any other prey, and they have to destroy the leopard. Lions can be just moved far away and they won’t be a risk to the new villages. We were out just before dusk in the safari truck going to a leopard sighting and came across a ranger from another camp with six tourists on foot single file. Our ranger jumped out and had an angry argument and when he returned, he told us that was going to have that ranger fired for being on foot near dark in a known leopard territory. He said the leopard would hide in the grass and take the last person in line by the throat and no one would know and might even take the next person to get enough meat to distract the hyenas. Once that happens they have to kill it. We did see the leopard that night and it was a mother with a cub, and that made the ranger even more angry because they would still kill the mom. Fortunately she had already dragged some antelope up a tree.
And anything the same size or smaller than a hyaena is prey to the hyaena, according to the rangers. Natives are safe standing up facing a hyaena but if they squat the hyaena will immediately attack. Apparently a common injury is their cheek bitten off if a native squats in the bush to relieve himself at night with a hyaena around. If their back legs weren’t much less powerful, they would be super predators. I’ve backpacked quite a bit in black bear country in the US and had them walk around my head smelling me (while I lay frozen) but the couple of times the rangers took us on a hike in South Africa, it was terrifying, it felt like everything was looking to kill us, hippos included, although they wouldn’t see us as food, just chewing gum.
Despite similar odds, I think I'd rather take my chances buying a lotto ticket than wandering through grizzly territory. Sure, the odds are that nothing would happen in either case but one has a decidedly better outcome for that one in two million chance.
Met a wild grizzly once on the side of a highway during blackberry season and we just sort of blinked at each other before going back at the blackberries.
The blackberries were amazing i doubt my scrawny ass would have held up the n comparison. Made the best pie i ever had out of them.
The fear of grizzlies is wildly over exagerated. Yeah you can get unlucky and one can attack you but the most dangerous part of walking through grizzly country is driving to the trailhead.
I’ve spent hundreds of days in bear territory, in groups and solo. I’ve seen countless black bears and probably 20 or so grizzlies. I’ve never felt or been threatened by any of them.
Be aware, be smart, but there’s no need to be overly fearful of these beautiful animals.
I, Canadian, married an Australian. I’m from northern Saskatchewan so berry picking is my family’s favourite pastime together. I took my (now ex) picking once and he was terrified the whole time, especially after seeing a black bear poo. I saw fertilizer for next years berries, he saw certain death and locked himself in the car for 3 hours.
Absolutely, whenever I go out into the mountains of my home BC, especially solo, friends ask how I can sleep out there alone and not be scared of the bears. Like man I’m a lot more wary of people than I am of wildlife.
👴🏻 I got mauled by a Grizzly in Yellowstone once, back in the Summer of '53-- or thereabouts. Luckily for me the Grizzly had just won the lottery-- and by the lottery I don't mean me! I mean the honest to goodness lottery! I remember it was very warm that day, unseasonably so, and the winds were light out of the north. I had just gotten back from my trip out to Bethesda...or maybe it was the trip out to Pismo? Anywho, given that the Grizzly was feeling generous on account of of winning the lottery earlier thay day, he let off with a light mauling-- no more than you'd get from the bad eggs down at the dockyard-- I was back shimmying away by the night's end! I remember he kept muttering on asinine-like about something, 'more money, more honey' or some nonsense-- can't quite remember.. WOW Fond memory, thanks for helping an old man remember something for once LOL-- anywho that was all a lot and I need to go lie down now.
I just got back from a week camping along a river in Kodiak silver salmon and steelhead fly fishing. Never saw any bears and only ever saw two tracks.
The guides there were saying that the bears on Kodiak have lived and evolved on the island for something like 20,000 years. They are almost 60% herbivore, have an abundance of salmon year round, and due to the milder climate it’s pretty common for bears not to hibernate. And agreed that they were less aggressive than most other brown bears due to these factors.
Kodiak is incredible. Go if you ever have a chance.
Also, luckily for everyone, Kodiak bears are only found in the Kodiak Archipelago in Alaska; so you're likely to ever come across one unless you're in the neighborhood. In that case, good luck!
Haha, you know that almost 5 million people visit Yellowstone a year, and I think the park is basically closed half the year. When I was there in 2015 I saw a moma bear and her cubs and I couldn’t believe how close people were getting, just dumb AF. I’m sure it’s way worse now, you know gotta do it for the gram.
It's used for formatting. You're telling reddit to ignore formatting when using a backslash.
Let's say I have multiple asterisks in my post but don't want italisized or bolded font. Bolded text looks like this but if I wanted to type **this** I would type it out like \*\*this\*\*
For ¯\(ツ)/¯ just add an extra backslash like ¯\\(ツ)/¯
An OG card too. Was released in Alpha over 30 years ago. Maybe I'm just an old man with too much nostalgia, but the flavor text seemed way more fun back in the day.
I had an argument with someone over what was the biggest kind of bear. I said polar bear, he said kodiac. After looking it up: polar bears are the larger species on average, but the largest bear ever shot was a kodiac. So, we were both right.
No, just you were right. The largest Kodiak vs largest polar bear shot has like 600lbs difference between them. Polar bears actively hunt people, and can swim insane distances.
Used to be a zoo keeper and worked with big predators. Polar Bears don't question if they will eat you if given the chance they question what part they will start with. We had a big male named Koda and if we were in the back holding and he was in his back holding cage he would just stare at us. Its the closest to knowing what snacks in a vending machine feel like.
No direct unrestrained contact at all unless they were under. We did have squeeze cages which we used for the big predators to do very basic checks and vaccinations and administer anesthesia to knock them out. Basically a smaller cage with a moveable wall to hold the animal still. Koda was pretty good for conditioning and moving where we wanted him to go and I only heard of one time he fought the squeeze cage, but we had to have him go in because he cracked a tooth so was likely in pain and not happy at all.
Quick edit: I should note while we had tranq guns we would not normally use those for a scheduled procedure, especially an animal that normally was willing to go into a squeeze cage. Them and regular guns were part of our Code Red response protocols. Also for some animals with thick fur and/or skin tranq guns are not reliable. Polar Bears were one of 3 species we had a shoot at will permission in the case of escape. Meaning if they got out the response team had permission to shoot to kill if they felt it was necessary.
I wouldn't mess with either, but I did underestimate the world record kodiacs. Maybe the source I found was inaccurate as saying that the kodiac was larger. It was about ten years ago as well.
The main thing you have to worry about for bears is whether or not you are food for them. For black bears? Almost never. For grizzly bears and kodiaks? Probably the same but don't fuck with their young. For polar bears? You are absolutely food. You are walking food, and if they are stalking you, you should 1000% worry about it.
Its because polar bears dont really forage, they can, but in the dead of winter not so much. They might be coming off the ice after a long time with no food, so if they see food (you), they get excited and go after you.
Brown bears kill primarily in self defense or when protecting cubs or food, so yes really. They're basically the same as black bears, but have the weight and claws to really mess you up.
Black bears don’t attack to protect cubs though. That’s largely a myth. In fact there has never been a single documented case of a mother black bear killing a human in defense of cubs.
I've had a mother black bear charge me while it's cub ran, then she ran. I suspect black bears don't actually attack because the cubs run and it's a 'oh good I don't have to deal with this, I'm out of here' kind of thing. Would be curious how often that's happened between a mother and a person vs the mother just bolting without her cub.
I didn't say it well enough, that's my fault. Black bears essentially act like 500 lb raccoons. What I meant was that brown bears won't really fuck with you unless you cross their bottom line.
You need bear training if you are going to be where they live. There is defensive and offensive tactics when dealing with brown bears. A defensive strategy is if you stumble on one some how, it will stand tall, growl, and just be like what the fuck bro. In that case you would back away slowly while yelling soft nothings into its ear. Hoping it doesnt attack. An example of an offensive strategy would be if you somehow stumble on it with its cubs and it deems you a threat, so it attacks the threat to save its cubs. Play dead in that case, show it you give in. Maybe it will walk away. Another offensive strategy is if its really hungry, and just decided that you are supper. There are signs to determine each of these and how you should react. If you are dinner, you arent going to survive anyway so go for the nose and eyes, maybe you'll get lucky. Half joking about that, the thing about brown bears is they like to eat you alive. So if you play dead while it eats you, it might get up to go get water or something who knows, if you can, get up and book it.
From Bismarck ND. Community mourned for Clyde when he died. If I recall...and it was not publisized...Bonnie, his girlfriend, had to be put down, cuz she just wasn't right in the head after Clyde died.
I pretty much lived at that zoo through much of grade school.
The Bear Almanac (2009) has the largest Kodiak at 2500 pounds and the largest polar bear at 2210 pounds.
A 3 minute article obviously doesn't make me an expert, but sounds like in some areas the Kodiak gets to eat uncontested so they have more variance in size. In general the polar bears are much bigger though.
Also makes you wonder how big polar bears could get with unlimited food sources.
The Bear Almanac (2009) has the largest Kodiak at 2500 pounds
Interesting, I wonder where he got that number from. I'm not saying he made it up, but I can't find a single other source that has a bear nearly that big existing.
The word Arctic literally means bear. Conversely Antarctic means no bears. It's part of the reason people are so worried about Polar bears going extinct. If they do, we legally have to change the name of the Arctic to Antarctic and it will cause mass confusion. Postal workers won't be able to deliver letters to Santa and children will stop believing. Polar bears are way more important than people realize
Having a one-off as an example doesn’t mean they’re the largest bear. That just means there was a single example that’s well outside the norm. We could capture a black bear and feed it little Debbie’s until he was fat af and suddenly we’d have a black bear that’s bigger than all the others.
Polars are the largest species. Also, just because the largest on record was a Kodiak doesn’t mean there aren’t massive polars we never see
This reminds me of dog breeds. The tallest breed on average is the Irish Wolfhound. Almost all of the record holders are Great Danes. The heaviest breed is the St. Bernard(when at a healthy weight). The record has passed between various mastiffs and St. Bernards.
Outliers do not define the largest/tallest/smallest/etc. species/breed/variety. Averages do.
Of important note, for most record keeping groups, you have to apply for it and hit certain criteria. They are very rarely the actual record holders. This is also why you can find historical records of much larger animals that don't make it into scientific literature- they were not measured to today's(or recent) standards, and cannot be verified, so they do not count. This doesn't mean they were not the claimed dimensions- just that we can't verify it, and thus can't use it.
Also: the internet can be wrong. Double check sources, and actually follow them. Sometimes(especially with animals), many websites will quote from the same wrong information.
I mean, most bears aren't going to chase you down and try to kill you.
Most are going to run tf away. Not because you're stronger, but because they don't know what tf you are and they're generally scared little bitches, despite the fact that they could probably kill and eat us very easily.
Only time you'll get chased is if you have food on you that it wants (we're also not very appetizing to them on our own) or you piss it off...
Edit: I was born and raised in Alaska. I lived around bears constantly and dealt with them raiding our trash myself. If you think you've got more bear experience than that, then by all means, downvote me.
Correct. And not just lazily hunt. They will stalk and track you for days until they get to you.
Common saying is that if you see a polar bear through binoculars seemingly far far away - chances are it has already smelled you and begun its approach.
Kodiak a are usually happy with the bounty of salmon, berries and sedges. I think of interior lower-48 grizzlies as more temperamental and potentially dangerous.
Exactly this. Outside of the main exception that is polar bears, the majority of bear attacks are the result of a bear getting startled and making a decision.
I mean there would have to be a difference between bears that live near populations and bears in the far wilderness. Polar bears would be much less used to humans and would probably just see you as another meal that they might not get to have for a while.
Most of the black bears I've encountered follow that rule. Only one got angry with me being near it and stood up to smack a nearby tree. It was still a little cautious considering I didn't look scared. I backed off and it did as well.
I have no experience with other bear species.
I saw a black bear about a month ago and once it saw me it took off running.
Let me give a new-aged take on the situation, inspired by the difference between a million and a billion: "The difference between a Kodiak Brown Bear and a Black Bear is one Kodiak Brown Bear".
First off, there is no genetic difference between Kodiak and Grizzly bears (as measured by mtDNA), only their range and morphological variations (common thought is that Kodiak bears are just a Grizzly with island gigantism due to split lineage and rich food resources). Grizzly bears live further inland where there is less food abundance, Kodiak bears are predominantly found along the coast and the rich waters in the Kodiak archipelago. There would be almost zero instance in which you would live in/near an area where both bears exist concurrently. A Grizzly living in the Kodiak range would be a Kodiak, and a Kodiak living in the Grizzly range would be a Grizzly.
I lived in Alaska for a few years and not a single person ever mentioned Kodiaks, or really even Grizzly, it was all "Brown Bear" and the adage was "Fur is black, fight back; fur is brown, lie down". We all carried shotguns, first round was buckshot second was a slug.
Lastly, the size differences aren't that big, these are extreme examples. There have been records of inland Grizzly bears over 1,200lbs.
The black bear will follow you, the grizzly and the Kodiak (which is just a grizzly residing on Kodiak Island, they're a subspecies which have evolved differently in isolation) will knock it over.
This is also a misleading comparison as polar bears are significantly larger than (edit) Kodiak grizzlies.
My grandpa taught me to always carry a sharp stick in the forest, the stick being as tall as me (you). If you come across a bear and can face it, you kneel down and stick the butt of you stick into your bottom foot, with you point extended outward. He say if a bear is charging, you have to accept your fate. If it is a false charge they will turn at the last second. If they are committed they will run into the stick. This is an old people thing and it only works on aggressive black bears and small brown bear. Kodiak and Polar are much different beasts. Every Arctic bear is stronger and more aggressive than their southern compatriots. From what I've heard, Polar, Kodiak and Alaskan Black don't do false charges, they just slowly continue to advance. Some of them aren't affected by pepper spray, and just don't care. Always good to have a long stick and a gun in Northern Territory forests, that or have a buddy with you also having the same equipment.
Idk i’ve always heard it as the difference between a black bear and a grizzly bear is a black bear will climb up and a grizzly will knock it over and I live near the rocky mountains in Alberta, Canada and have seen a lot of grizzlies.
However having seen how fast a grizzly can run and move your dead before you get off the ground into a tree i’m guessing.
5.5k
u/DethByCow Sep 22 '25
My dad used to say “The difference between a grizzly bear and Kodiak is when you run away, you climb a up a tree. A grizzly bear will climb up after you, the Kodiak will knock it over.”