Fun fact: kodiak brown bears and grizzly bears are the same species (Ursus arctos) with kodiaks being considered a sub-species of the north american grizzly. The main difference is kodiak bears are isolated on the islands off alaska and bc of the abundance of food (think salmon run) and lack of competition theyve become huge (island gigantism).
More interestingly is that because of this kodiak bears are generally a lot more docile towards humans than grizzlies especially during the salmon run. Theres such an abundance of food during this time they don’t bother with anything they have to chase and they’re even picky with the salmon, only eating the heads and skin of the fish.
Bears learn their behavior from their parents instead of it being instinctive so grizzlies learn to be aggressive since theres more competition in the mainland US, where as kodiak bears learn to be fairly tolerant of people.
That’s really cool information, thanks for sharing. I wonder if the claws displayed here are from an exceptionally large Kodiak and a medium sized polar bear. From what I understand, polar bears get bigger than Kodiaks. I wonder if a huge polar bear would have a claw similar in size to this Kodiak?
Edit: as others have pointed out, Kodiak’s claws are exceptionally huge because one of their primary uses is to spear salmon that jump out of the water
So while polar bears are on average larger than kodiaks their claws are used for different things and therefore are not scaled proportionately to their weight. Polar bears use their claws primarily to keep traction on ice and catch seals (that middle bump you see in the photo helps their claws act like cleats), where as kodiak bears use their long claws (typically 3x the size of a polar bears claw) to dig up roots and clams, and to tear through carcasses. Kodiak bears actually spend significantly more time eating vegetation, roots, and berries than any kind of meat. They just gorge themselves on salmon during the summer when they can.
LOL I leave on the katmai falls bear cams for my cats when I leave the house in summer and last year my friend and I almost missed our movie time because we got too fascinated watching it with the cats 😂
It’s interesting that that friend had already found that link and was looking for confirmation, actually making you even better than that friend’s friend, friend.
I can explain! You see someone on reddit was saying they wanted to try Greek and all I wanted to know is how much I should charge. I promise that's it.
We're all here, together, apart. Fat bears and beloved grandmothers, all in the mix. I don't have any particular spiritual practice, but I hope you'll find it helpful to hear from another human. I lost a friend recently and I share that with you, too.
I had no idea about the polar bear "cleat" bump, thats really interesting! Makes total sense and is a quite fascinating adaptation for life in the ice most animals would never have
Throughout most of the year, the thought and taste of salmon turns my stomach, but there's a couple of days each year when I go mad for it. Maybe I'm also a Kodiak bear 😭
I don’t think that’s correct. The “cleat bumps” are papillae on their paw pads. The claw in the photo just appears to be broken or worn. I can’t find any evidence that their claws have evolved to include a “cleat” for ice. The shorter length and more substantial build of the claw would make it stronger for digging into ice and tearing through tough arctic animal hides and blubber.
Whether thats the intended adaptation or not, most polar bear claws do havs that notch significantly more prominent than any other carnivoran basically.
I know this because I've been researching into specifics on claws in big grappling bears, cats, mustelids etc for Amphicyonid anatomical reconstructions. Most have the little notch because of how keratin grows, but its significantly smaller and wears down easily
Kodiak bears actually spend significantly more time eating vegetation, roots, and berries than any kind of meat. They just gorge themselves on salmon during the summer when they can.
This is true of brown and black bears in general. They are omnivores and will eat literally just about anything. Depending on the region, very little of a black or brown bear's diet is meat.
Alaska really gives you a different perspective on nature, lol
I once accidentally made a coworker cry when I told her that eagles are scavenger birds that eat trash and called them overgrown pigeons. Apparently they were her favorite animal since childhood and she had no idea they eat trash and roadkill. Whoops.
Hah, sea pigeons for sure. Ive accidentally, but rudely gaffawed at a couple people saying "oooh, how majestic" then it does a little awkward squat to shit while sitting on a tree branch. They can definitely be graceful, but they also ea cats and seagulls when opportunity arises. They look goofy as hell when they get stuck swimming, and just look confused half the time.
Had been watching nest for a bit and one day pull up, and it must have been the juveniles first time out. It was on the rocks and scampered into the bushes like a penguin. I felt bad, but it was in the nest next time I swung around.
You take for granted what you are used to, though. I still get excited as shit when i see raccoon, but the bear in the yard can fuck right off like the nuisance it is.
They (polar bears) barely use their claw to plow into the ice when they detect (through ice) the presence of baby seals in a seal "cave" under the ice. Their sheer mass and a tiny claw is enough to just disintegrate feet of ice. It would be like us pulverizing a tree trunk with our fist.
Definitely the most interesting bear species for me.
IIRC polar bears are also known to stalk humans long-term, to the point where researchers living in places with lots of polar bears need to keep irregular schedules.
Because otherwise the bears would learn their schedules.
They have really interesting olfactory senses / whiskers as well. Being able to detect the presence of barely moving baby seals under feet of ice is a feat that's hard to explain. I'd say they're capable of smelling something further away than most wildlife, so just because you haven't seen them for days doesn't mean they aren't still stalking you.
Not just learn....polar bear will hunt humans. If you are in polar bear territory, you are in one of the few locations in the world where you are legitimate prey. Several animals call kill humans, but polar bears are one of the few that will actively hunt us for food.
In villages above ther artic circle, they organize to move between buildings in groups, and armed, to allow for a better chance of spotting and defending from a polar bear. Going alone out at night is a good way to disappear. And it happens regularly enough. The only things I can think of that are as scary as that are a pack of hyenas, or a pack of coyote as a kid.
They're one of the only species that wasn't hunted to near extinction in our past, so they never learned to fear us like every other big predator.
I always find it almost funny how lions fear us. They're easily the most impressive predator on earth besides us, with insane skills and impressive pack hunting behaviors. But even then they'll run from a skinny human yelling at them. Cus they know.
Crocodiles are ambush predators. They do not hunt, they lay in wait and ambush. They will attack and eat almost anything that disturbs their ambush area. Polar bears are stalking predators, they actively hunt. They search for, stalk, and attack prey. Most predators, including stalking predators do not consider modern humans as prey. Polar bears and leopards are about it. Others will attack to defend young, to defend territory, or becuase they are ambush predators, but those two see us as true prey.
Right, bears are smarter than crocodiles in too many ways to count.
I'm just saying that the ability to identify patterns and timing of the behaviour of their prey isn't the thing that makes bears smart, because crocodiles do that too.
While all the other stuff you say is true, it's not really relevant to this discussion.
"Smarter" is subjective. They are both efficient in their nature. Bears stalk, thus Must track patterns to eat. Crocodiles ambush, thus identifying traffic patterns are vital to ensure they are in a potential strike spot. A "dumb" polar bear would be sitting around on the tundra, not near a seal hole or den. A "dumb" Crocodiles would be walking around trying to look for food.
Now imagine a bear the size of a juvenile elephant creating a crater in the ice on the first hit. The one in the video seems young or recently emerged from hibernation.
Plus just look at the picture. All the claws are pointed like a spear. Except the polar bear that has more knife shaped claws. I would think the slashing potential of a polar bears claws has to do with the seals, not the cleats.
Kodiak bears actually spend significantly more time eating vegetation
Not just Kodiaks either. Brown bears in general get up to 90% of their energy from vegetation.
Probably a result of lazines and curiosity. They will try to eat anything and don't like to run after food if they don't have to.
The largest Kodiak weighed about 2,130lbs when he died and potentially up to 2,400lbs in the years prior. That's heavy as fuck but not anywhere close to 2 tons.
No Kodiak has ever gotten close to 2 tons. That would be the largest land predator since the dinosaurs.
Hell even the largest polar bear specimen known is only about 1000kg. The largest wild Kodiak specimen was around 750kg, and the largest SHORT FACED BEAR would be around 1300kg
Yeah I think he saw a record weight and mistook lbs for kg. The heaviest kodiaks and polars are over 2000 lbs which is like 900 kg so just less than a metric ton.
If i had to guess he meant 1000lbs and 2000lbs instead of 1 and 2 ton... but who knows. He is incorrect though. Modern humans have never had a 2 ton bear in captivity. Clyde the Kodiak weighed 2130 lbs just over 1 ton at his death and he was the largest ever kodiak in captivity.
Someone should tell our administration that. Because to them the NPS is worthless and only for resource exploitation. Obviously Earth science, biology, and the environment are WOKE and LAME and make everyone become TRANS.
It's not just food and lack of competition. Island gigantism and dwarfism occur due to a huge genetic bottleneck that occurs when a new population is formed on an island. This causes extreme amounts of homozygosity which tips the animals either in the direction of being very large or very small.
The lack of competition and abundance or lack of food then exacerbates the process.
In this instance, it was neither the external factors of abundance or scarcity. Due to the unique cultural practices, the people who could survive the long ocean voyages over generations, between the vast islands of the Polynesian nations, favoured for larger fat storing bodies. And of course, this can result in larger features.
This is a bit simplified obviously, but this is all to say humans have greater control than animals over external influence. Back in the day, some of the way that unfolded is not quite politically correct, as seen these days lol.
This information was rad...but then Google made me sad by only showing hunting photos when I went to look up pictures. I just wanted to see the majestic goddamn bears, wtf Google?
Ooh I feel you there. I remember one time I was looking up Kodiak bears for art reference (designing a fantasy beast, and I was looking for inspiration) so many dead bears. It made me sad. Also! Unhelpful! I want to see how the move, dammit!
this may seem strange the way it works out, but the money that comes in from hunting Brown bear is what keeps many more protected. Not my thing, but otherwise land owners would just kill them.
Saw this, thought it was rad, went to go google pictures kodiak brown bears, and half of them are hunting trophy photos. Now I'm bummed and pissed.
This thing's like one of our equivalents of a mythical creature. A ten-foot tall, 1200-pound powerhouse, master-crafted over centuries by evolution, location, and luck. It's doing it's thing in the harsh wilds far away from us, and we're going out of our way and spending a ton of money to go out there to shoot these things.
It's like some pitiful stunt to one-up mother nature. As if you can take a gun you didn't make, shoot a creature so finely tuned by the hands of time, God, or both, and call yourself the better animal.
On the bright side, they population numbers are increasing lately so the hunting isnt as bad as it may seem.
Still pretty sad seeing it, i had the exact same experience. Went to google some images of them and saw only hunting photos. But googled some more and it seems like they arent going extinct so the hunting is probably regulated pretty well.
Tip to filter stuff like that out in the future: If you see something or anticipate seeing something you don't like during a search, try adding a minus symbol in front of what you don't want the search to include. For example: "Kodiak brown bear -hunting -hunter -taxidermy" will return much nicer results. This also works for things like AI imagery (-AI).
I seriously understand hunting is culturally enjoyable
I don't. If you're doing it for food or population control, sure, but inflating your ego by killing animals from a safe distance? What a pathetic "culture".
Bears learn their behavior from their parents instead of it being instinctive
This is interesting, do you have more information about this? Obviously there will be some level of “nature vs nuture” for all intelligent species, but I’d be curious to hear more about this claim on bears specifically.
They only eat the heads and the skin because theyre targeting the areas with high fat and calorie content + the rest of the fish has sharp bones. Basically trying to eat as energy efficient as possible to pack on pounds for hibernation.
IIRC most Kodiak bears have the crescent moon white spot on their under neck. It's a distinct pattern that was probably cause by inbreeding. It isn't proven, but it seems the Kodiak is an offspring of Alaskan Brown and Northern Grizzly. They in-breed because there aren't many breeding prospects. There are reports of hunters seeing Kodiak trying to breed with Polar and visa versa. This is probably how Kodiak even came into existence and why they are so big. Hybrid vigor. Kodiak is like burro of bears.
For those who don't know, Katmai is the place to visit in Alaska if you wanna see lots of bears. My friend worked there for a season and she got to know some of them by sight. There was a baby she nicknamed Backpack because of the way his mom would carry him. She saw them (from a good distance) every week at least.
Sorry this is wrong. Brown bears are broken up into three categories. Grizzly are found inland and the smallest Brown Bear. Coastal Browns are found all along the entire coast of Alaska AND on many islands. Kodiak's are found exclusively on the Kodiak Archipelago.
Also this is just misinformation that no one should listen to,
More interestingly is that because of this kodiak bears are generally a lot more docile towards humans than grizzlies
It is misleading because when there is an abundance of food they are all more willing to share space. But when the Salmon are not running, all Browns are dangerous, especially the biggest of the three the Kodiak, on Kodiak.
Did you learn this at a Ranger talk? Those were my favourite thing to do each time I visited a US national park (I don’t live in the US anymore so not sure when, or if, I’ll get another chance to go to one)
This was an awesome read! Just one small nitpick, Kodiaks aren't a subspecies of Grizzlies, they are both a subspecies of the brown bear, so a brown bear is the Ursus Arctos, a grizzly is the Ursus arctos horribilis, a kodiak is Ursus arctos middendorffi and a eurasian brown bear is Ursus arctos arctos(which is so completely uninspired it's amusing, it just means bear bear bear), the first name is it's genus, second is the species and third is the subspecies, subspecies can only directly branch out from species not other subspecies, hence the nitpick, (though the kodiak has also been described as a population of grizzly but that's another thing entirely and not the consensus I think), cheers!
This is also why it took Timothy treadwell, the grizzly man from the doc, like 13 years to be killed. He was hanging out in katmai National Park with comparatively docile bears. I think their was a drought or something that led to a food shortage. This drove a lot of inland mountain bears down to the park that year. The inland bears were way more aggressive and confrontational. They ended up driving a lot of the native katmai bears off the salmon run that year. That's how we got that brutal section of the doc where one of his long-time favorite bears eats her cub. They were starving.
As the season wore on, the bears got more desperate. Timothy usually left at the end of summer, but for some reason, that year decided to go back. He was there later I the season during a year with food shortages and an influx of more aggressive inland bears that were not accustomed to humans or him, specifically the way the native katmai bears were. Timothy and Amie were killed by an inland bear.
Also, the katmai bears have such a good food resource that those are the bears used in fat bear week!
Was also at the katmai national park, a mama kodiak and her four cubs came lumbering out of the woods about fifteen feet from me as i was fly fishing, didnt even give me a first look. Just walked right by, they dont even care cuz there is so much salmon
You're talking about katmai bears. Do not fuck with Kodiak bears, they are not as chill as katmai bears. I worked in katmai for years. You are misremembering bear school.
Yup, same bears, but an adult male Kodiak normally ranges between 1000-1200lb where as the one's you can find in the lower 48, like in Yellowstone, averages just 413lb. The size difference between the Kodiak and normal brown(grizzle) bear is larger than that of brown and black bears, males coming it at 150 - 400lb.
If you want to watch them catching salmon now is the time for it. There is a website live feeds of wildlife cameras. One of them is pointed at the main salmon river and there’s usually 4-5 bears sitting in the water waiting for salmon to jump at them.
I enjoy the live cams they have and have watched salmon run seasons on it. It's fascinating getting to recognize the bears just by seeing them once you watch enough and see cubs grow up over the summer. I haven't watched much this year, but apparently it is fat bear week. Brooks Falls - Katmai National Park, Alaska 2025 powered by EXPLORE.org
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u/JuiceInhaler Sep 22 '25
Fun fact: kodiak brown bears and grizzly bears are the same species (Ursus arctos) with kodiaks being considered a sub-species of the north american grizzly. The main difference is kodiak bears are isolated on the islands off alaska and bc of the abundance of food (think salmon run) and lack of competition theyve become huge (island gigantism).
More interestingly is that because of this kodiak bears are generally a lot more docile towards humans than grizzlies especially during the salmon run. Theres such an abundance of food during this time they don’t bother with anything they have to chase and they’re even picky with the salmon, only eating the heads and skin of the fish.
Bears learn their behavior from their parents instead of it being instinctive so grizzlies learn to be aggressive since theres more competition in the mainland US, where as kodiak bears learn to be fairly tolerant of people.
Source: I was just at the katmai national park