How to Tell Bears Apart: Amazing Tricks Wildlife Experts Use!

To the untrained eye of the casual observer, the mighty brown bears of Alaska can all look pretty much the same. After all, they're big, they're brown and furry, they all have large teeth and sharp claws. So what's so special about that? In reality, though, bears, just like people, have unique physical characteristics and personalities that do significantly differentiate them from one another. In this video, we'll explore some of these unique characteristics that wildlife biologists and others use to identify individual bears. This video is brought to you by the Adventures of King Kodiak, a fun and educational children's book series about the biggest bears in the world and the place they call home. Order your copies today at Amazon.com or by visiting the 3 Minutes Outdoors website at 3minutesoutdoors.com. It's very common for wildlife biologists, rangers, guides, photographers and others who spend a lot of time around the big brown bears of Alaska to be able to clearly identify individual bears from others in the same way that we identify individual people from other humans. For example, many of the bears that frequent popular bear viewing locations such as Brooks Falls have been given unique names and can all be identified by a number of unique characteristics. Identifying and even naming bears in such a manner is an effective tool for studying them and monitoring their activity throughout the years. The most common characteristics that are used to identify bears are the following. One of the first means of identifying a bear is by distinguishing its gender. Now I did an entire video on this subject a while ago, so I won't repeat everything here again, but there are some fairly easy ways to clearly identify a bear's gender, including the obvious such as mammary glands and visible sex organs. Along with the obvious signs, the body shape of the bear can be another indicator. Mature male bears have wide, muscular shoulders which are much wider than their head, a bulky midsection and big, heavy front legs that remain thick all the way down to their ankles. Mature female bears, on the other hand, have more of a pear-shaped body with a big butt, narrow shoulders which are about the same width as their head, and short, thin legs that taper down to rather thin ankles. Female bears often appear to be closer to the ground than males due to their shorter legs. Another set of features that can be used to identify male from female bears in general, as well as individual bears from others, is their head and ears. Male bears, or boars as they're referred to, have a wide, square-shaped head with a thickly muscled forehead and a deep valley all the way down the middle, kind of like a butt crack. Mature females have a smaller, more narrow-shaped head. The ears on mature brown bears, both male and female, will appear to be small and set wide apart, almost on the side of their head instead of on top, as seen on younger bears. The ears on individual bears can also sometimes be damaged or even missing in a way that can be used to clearly identify a particular bear. Just as we humans have very unique, individual faces, so do bears. Now this is a means of identification that does take a little more time and study to develop, but when you spend enough time around a group of bears in a certain area, you do begin to recognize their faces quite clearly. Some bears have a longer or shorter muzzle, a slightly different structure to their face, or other facial features that will make it relatively easy to tell them apart. A bear's face and upper body can sometimes be covered in scars from fighting. While male bears tend to have more of these features, female bears can also get pretty beat up while defending their cubs from aggressive males. The scars and wounds that bears accumulate over the years can serve as an easy way to accurately identify them from one another. In fact, some bears become rather famous for their scars and wounds, such as this bear, nicknamed Holyfield, who I did a past video about. Brown bears can have different colored claws, from dark brown and almost black, to tan and almost white looking claws. These color variations can also be used as a unique point of reference for identifying certain bears. Just like we humans, some bears are pretty laid back and don't seem to get too upset by much of anything, and others are often in a bad mood and can easily become aggressive. When observing how a certain bear interacts with other bears, it'll be quite easy to identify what the bear's primary disposition is, which is also usually a reflection of that bear's level of dominance in the local bear hierarchy, both of which can be used to distinguish individual bears from others. While all brown bears essentially have brown fur, there can be quite a bit of color variation, from light blonde to dark chocolate and almost black in coloration. Also, when bears shed their fur from year to year, they leave a fairly consistent shed pattern, which is another means of identifying individual bears from each other. Just as we humans all have different talents and unique behaviors, bears are much the same. For example, some bears are really good at fishing and will employ a certain technique to consistently catch their fish, which is also something I've done a past video about. Meanwhile, other bears might be terrible at catching fish. Bears can have very different behaviors from one to another and do things quite differently, which again, are all ways to identify them from each other. So add up all these different characteristics and behaviors, and you can see that there are many ways to clearly identify individual bears from the rest of their kind. Well, my friends, I hope you've enjoyed this video, and if you'd like to see lots more like this one, be sure to subscribe to this channel.