Hey Folks,

They say 3 is a lucky number – so here’s my third grizzly bear photo in a row. This was one of the prettiest grizzly bears I’ve seen, a really light blond color, with darker bands around the lower legs and face – simply a beautiful animal. I spent a lot of time shooting this bear, and got a number of runs like this, the bear coming directly at me, great light, nice background – what’s there to not like?

So what exactly is going on here? The bear is running after a salmon in the water ahead of the bear. The alert ‘ears up’ of the bear indicate it’s focused on something, rather than this being a predatory ‘charge’. A grizzly bear charging a person will almost always have its ears laid back, flat against its head, indicating an aggressive/defensive angry animal. So, mum, don’t worry, this isn’t really a grizzly bear charging at me; the bear is chasing a fish, which happens to be seeking refuge behind me. 🙂

It’s actually really interesting to watch bears fish the rivers and streams for salmon. Bears are such individuals, like humans, and behaviors are almost entirely learned; so they often vary greatly from one bear to another. Some bears adapt a mellower ‘wait and see’ approach, standing for hours on end without taking so much as a step, waiting for a fish to meander within leaping range. Some bears, especially younger ones, will do the above ‘charge and chase’ strategy. Others actually walk the rivers snorkeling, heads under the water, only their ears above the surface, like radar (look, a palindrome!), while some others will actually do a short ‘stalk’ approaching closely, quietly, stealthily, catlike, before a pounce. One bear, people used to call ‘Diver’, would completely submerge beneath the surface, swim around underwater and come up with salmon.

It’s a blast watching them, and in some places, like Katmai National Park, the bear populations are so dense and concentrated, you really get to see a myriad different behaviors, etc. Each bear does his/her own thing. I could watch them for hours, it’s so cool. And they eat, eat, and eat. This stage of year they are said to go into what’s called ‘hyperphagia’ – well, that’s what we call it, I’m not sure the bears call it that. It’s basically an increased appetite, an over-eating phase, fattening up before hibernation. They’re pretty hard core about it .. one 5 pound salmon contains around 4500 calories, the equivalent of 9 cheeseburgers. An adult brown bear (grizzly bears, brown bears, same thing – Ursus arctos) can eat, on average, 90 pounds of salmon a day. I’ll help you out with this mathematical problem – that equates to 162 cheeseburgers a day. Ever see the movie ‘Supersize Me’? Morgan Spurlock ate nothing but McDonald’s for 30 days … but he couldn’t even come CLOSE to 162 cheeseburgers a day. That’s insane.

Just to illustrate how much better bears are then us at this kind of thing, Morgan Spurlock ate about 4500-5000 calories a day (one salmon for the bears) – he put on nearly 25 pounds in 30 days, and it took him over a year to lose the weight afterward. Bears lose it in a few short months sleeping inside a cave, arising in spring all sleek and trim. Now tell me that ain’t just too cool!

Cheers

Carl

PS – edited the typo in the last paragraph thanks to the keen eye of Mr May. Thank you Peter.