GIANT KODIAK BEARS ｜ The Largest Grizzly Bears on Earth ｜ 4K

Andreas Keeling has been fascinated by bears for many years. Cave bears must have been real giants. Their head is absolutely enormous. There are always new rumors of gigantic bears surviving in remote places. Andreas can't get the idea of them out of his head. Do they really still exist? He just has to find out. After years of searching, he finally met them face to face in one of the most inaccessible parts of Alaska. He found that they really do still exist. And his reward was the best pictures he has ever taken. In his search for the giant bears, Andreas reads everything he can lay hands on. One day, he comes across the headline, giant grizzly skeleton found on Aleutian Islands. This reminds him of a discovery he had made years before with his Indian friend, Greg. In an abandoned trapper's hut, they found old photos showing bear skins of an incredible size. At the time, for them, this was real evidence that these giants still exist. Some weeks later, he is in Alaska again. Together with Greg, he wants to find out how much truth there actually is in these stories of giant bears. They begin their search in central Alaska, an area which Greg knows well, where they are almost certain to run into grizzlies. Wow, look at the great view. Isn't this fantastic? You see some caribou? Yeah. But first, something else. They find a caribou in a wide riverbed, cornered by wolves. Andreas has been filming and photographing in Alaska for 11 years. But in all that time, he has never seen the climax of a hunt. The animals in this huge country are relatively few and far between. So the chance doesn't often arise. For a long time, they forget their real goal, the grizzlies. They're completely spellbound by the action. The drama is played out as if on a stage, on a stretch of the river in full view. They are amazed by the caribou's courageous defense. Wolves can't deliver a fatal bite, so they have to hunt it to exhaustion. But this time, the caribou turns the tables on them. The wolves gave up on the caribou. That's all. They have pitched their camp on a hilltop with a good view. Towards evening, they have visitors. You been out here long? Yeah, we got here yesterday. We were looking for grizzly bears. Yeah, just over the hill there. About two days, right down here in a den, just over the ridge there. The trapper told them that he had seen a young grizzly running pretty fast across the river. The wolves had pulled down a sick elk there, and the bear obviously wanted to take over their kill. The trapper said he had never seen the light. Of course, the wolves didn't want to give in. They fought hard and fiercely to defend their prey. This was a bit risky. If the bear had caught one of them, it would have broken every bone in its body. The bear was still pretty young and inexperienced. This wouldn't have happened with an adult. It was incredible. The trapper could hardly believe what he was seeing. But gradually, the bear got the upper hand. Probably most of the wolves had already eaten their fill and were gradually quitting the fight. The last of them could no longer keep the grizzly at bay and gave up. The young bear had to fight hard, even for the leftover bones. There is not much to offer for grizzlies in central Alaska. In the weeks that Greg and Andreas are there, they don't find any particularly big specimens. So they decide to have a look on the southeast coast of Alaska. The climate there is more gentle, and the coastal mountains are covered in dense forests. The annual rainfall here is higher than in the tropical rainforests, and the temperatures are relatively mild. There is much more food to be found in the forests and rivers here than in the interior. In the dense vegetation, they work long and hard tracking bears. Coastal brown bears, as the grizzlies here are called, are amazingly shy. Andreas can approach only very cautiously from upwind. Even so, it seems to spot him quickly and disappears further into the undergrowth. It is far from easy to follow the brown bear in the gloomy primeval forest. In spite of all his efforts, within half an hour, he's lost sight of it. Greg has better luck. On the bank, he has spotted a black bear eating something. Greg wants to find out what it has caught and creeps up cautiously. The startled bear reacts immediately. Unlike the grizzly, it doesn't retreat. Instead, it looks for safety up a tree. This is typical of black bears because grizzlies, their only enemies, can't climb. The rivers of the northern coastal rainforests pour massive volumes of water into the sea over steep rapids. During the summer months, these turbulent rivers are a favorite hunting ground for bears. For a female black bear with cubs, salmon is the most nourishing food of the year. When the huge shoals come up the river, the bears are very choosy. This one throws two salmon back. Only the third is carried to their feeding place, but they won't have the enjoyable meal they were expecting. The mother bear, so close to her cubs, does not by any means want company. Nobody with any sense would confront a mother who is so defensive against all comers. But although she is physically superior, she forgets her fish and takes to her heels. The cubs, to be in the safe side, flee upstairs. Heavy rainfall has swollen the rapids to a dangerously high level. Even salmon now find them difficult to climb. More and more fish build up below the falls. The fierce current also makes it harder for the black bears to catch their prey. The turbulent water can be dangerous, even for them. The cubs no longer dare to go close to the waterfall, but their mother can still supply them with food. The black bears don't have the falls to themselves for long. The dense shoals of fish have attracted their larger cousins. Grizzlies suddenly appear close by. Nervously, the black bears warn their cubs with loud clicks. For black bears, grizzlies are a serious and growing danger. When food is in short supply, they deliberately hunt their smaller relations. Here, in fact, they have more than enough to eat. But the mother black bear prefers to disappear along with her cubs. Better safe than sorry. The adolescent grizzlies monopolize this section of the river for weeks. Greg and Andreas wait a long time, but the young rowdies are the only bears there. Here, too, they find no giants. They decide to continue their search in a sailing boat. Further to the northwest, there is still very promising bear habitat, and a boat is the best way to get there. Their goal is Kodiak, the legendary bear island in the Gulf of Alaska. Some 100 sea miles lie before them. With luck, the weather will stay calm in these often stormy waters. After more than a week at sea, Kodiak comes into view. In the cold phase of the Ice Age, about 15,000 years ago, the sea level was much lower. Kodiak was then joined to the mainland, and coastal brown bears could easily walk there. Isolated on the island, the subspecies of Kodiak bears evolved. The green island, where there is plenty of rainfall but little snow, doesn't make for an easy landing. Stream beds are the only way into the island. Almost impenetrable alder thickets, as far as the eye can see, and constant rain. Searching for bears is no easier here than in the rainforest on the mainland. After several days, they finally find the first signs of bears. This spruce had been marked by a brown bear and used as a scratching post. At any rate, the tufts of hair hanging at an impressive height show that this was not a small bear. It is clear that here in the undergrowth, they are hardly likely to bump into a bear. All the same, they search the places where bears could now most probably expect to find food, the lakes and streams. And suddenly, they see the first bear, which leads to an awkward moment. Andreas does not notice how the bear watches his efforts with a fishing rod with great interest. The salmon are going to improve their larder for a few days. The grizzly has his own opinion. To him, Andreas is merely a rival from whom he could steal easy pickings. This animal that they had looked for for so long is suddenly much closer than they would like. It is an old male, not necessarily aggressive, but with such a powerful animal, any mistake could be dangerous. Hey, go. Andreas must try to show the correct mixture of calm and composure so as not to arouse the bear and also not to challenge him. This is not so easy when your knees are trembling. Conflicts like this very often turn out unfavorably for humans. All the same, Andreas is pleased that the bear is interested and has been attracted to them. And now they have found it, the best feeding place for bears for miles around. A shallow fjord is absolutely swarming with them. Here, the silver salmon run has begun. In all his years in Alaska, Andreas has never seen so many bears so close together. In fact, bears are loners, and the presence of so many of their kind leads to a number of small quarrels. But generally speaking, grizzlies are peaceful animals. Conditions are ideal for bears in the Kodiak Islands. An amazing number of mother bears here have three or four cubs following them. In the cold parts of Alaska, by contrast, they have at most two cubs. This mother has brought three cubs through the first six months. That is a heavy burden for a female because the youngsters depend on her completely for a whole year. To Andreas' surprise, the cubs eagerly try their hand at fishing. Obviously, they are imitating their mother. At first, they treat it as a game, and then the tiny creature actually succeeds. Andreas has never seen such a young fisherman in the whole of Alaska. He seems mightily proud of his catch. In the shallow water, salmon fishing is child's play. But some of the juveniles are still very clumsy at it. It's not so easy to get a firm grip on a slippery fish. Little by little, the bears come to within a few meters of Andreas and Greg. The bears take no notice of them because they are finding plenty of food, and the men are keeping very still. So the huge animals allow themselves to be filmed from really close up, completely uninhibited. For years, this has been no more than a dream to Andreas. Sometimes, it takes an amazingly long time for them to catch a fish. But they all now seem to be fully fed, not taking the hunt completely seriously. Wow, did you see that grizzly bear? That's pretty incredible. He's just been like three yards away from me. I mean, can he do that again? You're a pretty lucky guy, man. Andreas has often been close to polar bears and grizzlies, too. But the atmosphere was never as relaxed as it is here. Summer is a wonderful time for the Kodiak bears. Without rod and line, without nets, they effortlessly haul in one fish after another. Andreas wants to see for himself how easy it is to catch a salmon with his bare hands. It's a tricky business, but as a sporting challenge, it can be fun. The professionals showed them time and again how it should be done. The good conditions on the islands have allowed the Kodiak grizzlies to become a particularly large and heavy subspecies of brown bear. This makes them famous and attracts many tourists to hunt them. The biggest animals are the first to fall to the guns. But there is so much food here that every year, plenty of cubs are produced to replace the losses. Andreas enjoys being close to the bears, so much so that it disturbs him that hardly any really big specimens show up. All the bears gather here from a wide area. This gives a false impression of a large population, though in fact, they are rather rare. Each animal needs about 200 square kilometers of habitat. And when the salmon run ends, they will be widely dispersed. If there aren't any really big bears to be found in a place like this, then there aren't any left. Trophy hunters have shot most of them, quite legally, with a hunting license. Indeed, people warned them before they came that the giants would be very hard to find. But Andreas expected to find at least a few worthwhile specimens. In spite of the numbers of grizzlies at the fjord, they left the island disappointed. They want to look in one more place, the Aleutian Islands in Western Alaska, an area so remote that it is hardly ever The chain of islands lies in one of the stormiest sea areas on Earth. Enclosed to the north by the Bering Sea and to the south by the North Pacific, it is the foul weather factory for the whole region. With their light sailing boat, they are not exactly well-equipped for these waters. They will need a few reasonably calm days to make the trip. It's a good place to start. Sea currents of as much as 8 knots do not make navigation among the islands any easier. In their little boat, they feel like a plaything of the elements, and they are delighted to reach the shelter of the coast. Dominated by volcanoes, carved by glaciers, a wild mountain chain spreads before them. Frequent earthquakes often cause new reefs to be formed here, reefs that are not marked on any chart. Only a few fishermen occasionally stray into the area. A fox forms the welcoming committee, and immediately, they see bears. The anchorage in the bay offers protection from the waves, though the island has a tidal range of about 7 meters. At low tide, the boat is stranded. However, this is no problem, because with its folding centerboard, it will lie itself gently on its side. The constantly changing tides make it essential to land with a boat. To save space, their dinghy is an inflatable. Sadly, it is irresistible to bears, which love the scent of rubber. If a bear took a bite out of the boat, it would be seriously bad news. So they build a small frame out of driftwood on the bank, where they can leave the canoe. It doesn't hang very high, but at least the bears won't be able to reach it. As a further deterrent, they put mothballs here and there. Bears hate the smell. It's an old trick to keep them away from a camp. To their surprise, it seems not to work for foxes. They are actually attracted by the smell. Early on the first morning, they meet a large bear. It pays them no attention as it rummages along the tide line looking for food. They don't want to rush things, so they let the animal go on its way. Sadly, after that, it doesn't reappear. Andrea searches the beach all day for tracks until he finally finds something. An enormous animal must have passed this way. Even though tracks and sand can easily look bigger than they really are, this footprint was made by a giant bear. They follow the trail until they lose it on rocky ground. When they see two bears in the distance on a seagrass meadow, they breathe a sigh of relief, though not because the bears are giants. They are two females who hardly notice Andreas as they graze steadily on the salt grass. It contains valuable proteins and minerals, but to become anything like satisfied, the bears must feed almost continuously. A female with cubs needs up to 20,000 calories per day to feed her young and lay down a fat store for the winter. She will not manage this with only seagrass to eat. Once they have seen him without showing signs of annoyance, he can cautiously follow them. They have shown that they will tolerate him in their own way. But he shouldn't risk forcing it. The situation can easily and very suddenly become dangerous. The animals stay completely calm. In this isolated place, they have probably never met humans yet and have had no untoward experience with people. However, their close presence demands respect. When the first humans wandered through this area 15,000 years ago on their way to North America, they must have come across fearless bears like these. And they seem to have made a deep impression on the wanderers. Their huge strength made them almost impossible for Stone Age hunters to attack, which is why many tribes included them in their mythology as godlike creatures. And it seems certain that some shamans drew practical benefits from the bears. Here, one of them digs out the root of a dwarf willow to eat. Shamans who studied the plants closely learned something astonishing. The roots contain an effective painkiller. They are rich in acetylsalicylic acid, the active agent in aspirin. Some tribes have known the uses of these roots and other medicinal plants for a very long time. They learned them from the bears. For the red foxes, Andreas is apparently like some strange predator worth watching. He might occasionally drop a few scraps, so they follow him all day. It's a particularly hard time of year for them. There are no mice or lemmings, and even bird's nests are scarce on this part of the coast. Small sticklebacks live in the brackish pools. Along with washed up flotsam and jetsam, they are the foxes' only source of food in this season. The foxes watch carefully to see how Andreas makes out as a fisherman. The little sticklebacks are easier to see from his vantage point, and he has no great trouble in catching a few. The result is an immediate squabble between the foxes, and Andreas quickly abandons his role as the great benefactor. They never set eyes on the bear with a huge footprint, in spite of days of searching. They decide to sail further. There are any numbers of bays here and offshore islands where no human has set foot for decades. Nobody knows where the bears go in the various seasons of the year. Years ago, a fisherman told Andreas about great coastal brown bears that swim from island to island to raid seabird nests. An interesting story, and completely believable, given the wealth of bird life in these parts. This island is settled mainly by herring gulls and glaucus gulls. The cold water and strong currents all around are among the richest in the world for fish. It is an ideal breeding and rearing place for countless seabirds. An island with tens of thousands of birds, eggs, and chicks would provide bears with a reliable source of food. But try as they might, they can find no sign of predators. The adult birds are not particularly nervous, and the chicks in the nests show hardly any fear of humans. For a bald eagle, islands like this are a goldmine for a few weeks. They have built their area on the highest cliff. They feed their offspring exclusively on puffins, which have a large breeding colony on the island. The birds seem to live here undisturbed by any larger predator. Next to the familiar puffins, Andreas and Greg find a colony of rare crested puffins. Their ornithological enthusiasm has unfortunate consequences. On days when the moon is full, the tidal range is especially high. Andreas anchored their boat too close to the shore, forgetting about the tide as they landed. When he finally thought of it again, it was far too late. The keel was not raised, and the rudder still mounted. A big mistake, which with a very low tide can lead to serious trouble. The boat is listing alarmingly. If the fiberglass hull is split, it can mean a sudden end to their expedition in such a deserted place. The long rudder hit the bottom first and broke. Only a stump remains. Repairs are impossible with the tools they have on board. This means that their ability to steer will be strictly limited. This is a poor prospect in these difficult waters, so far from the nearest settlement. In the next bay, they forget such minor technical matters. The mud banks are covered with bear prints. There are deep holes dug in the mud, and huge numbers of mussel shells scattered everywhere. At the edge of the bay, they discover a giant coastal brown bear, whose size and weight put all the animals they have seen so far in the shade. Finally, there it is, the giant grizzly for which they've been hunting for so long. A huge male, certainly more than 20 years old, and weighing far more than 1,500 kilograms. And what does he eat? Little hard-shelled mussels. So how many must he open in a day to satisfy his hunger? Yet he does it very carefully and with great skill. Towards the men, he is hesitant, almost suspicious. But bears here were never systematically hunted. Here, undisturbed for centuries, they could grow into giants like this. All Andreas can do is to stay still and let the monster come towards him. After all the many bears that he has met out here, Andreas is now quite nervous, struggling to keep himself under control. But the enormous animal is not especially interested in him. It has checked out his scent and now calmly devotes itself once more to the mussels. Elsewhere, salmon or rich pastures attract the bears. But here it is the mussel beds. At low tide, grizzlies are digging everywhere, satisfying their hunger with seafood. In these islands, the big salmon runs take place in late summer. Apart from grass and mussels, there is not much for bears to eat here during the warm months of the year. But they manage the best they can with what there is. It is an advantage to be equipped with all-purpose teeth and a strong stomach. True carnivores would go hungry here. And herbivores, on the other hand, couldn't do a thing with the seasonal supplies from the sea, such as fish and shellfish. There is hardly any competition when the food supply is so evenly spread out. It's not worth squabbling over a few mussels. The mud bank is full of them. Week after week, the brown bears feed almost exclusively on mussels. Then some of the bears become restless. More and more of them leave the bay and wander inland over the mountain crests. Andreas and Greg have some hard days ahead of them because they have to haul their equipment a long way. But it looks as if something is about to happen. And they certainly want to stay with the bears. The breeding season is starting. Beyond the mountain range in a wide valley, they run into a large gathering of bears once again. The plains provide juicy pasture, which means good food. Places like this bring the loners together, as do other abundant feeding areas. And in the season when there are plenty of receptive females about, feeding grounds become important places to get acquainted. Even though the breeding season lasts for several months, each individual female is in heat for only about three weeks. Unlike many other mammals, the bear's ovulation is not spontaneous, but is brought on by her partner's courtship. This is important among animals that live alone, so that when the female is ready to conceive, there is also a male on hand who is ready to mate. But because the females spend several years raising their young, only about a third of them are receptive in any way. And they allow mating on only three or four days. This leads to fierce competition among the adult males. A stronger rival brings the cozy partnership to a sudden end. But he can't just take over the female. She, too, has a choice in the matter. He is left empty-handed when the pair moves on again. For the first time, Andreas sees a mother bear with four cubs. Until now, this was known only on Kodiak. But the Aleutian climate is just as kind, and the bears have plenty of food, or at least in theory. In fact, the cubs don't look too well, and their mother also shows signs that hard work has taken its toll. It strikes Andreas once more how little the bears are actually studied here in the Far West. These islands have practically never been visited by people, so long studies are hardly practicable. He feels privileged to be able to observe the great predators here in peace. Fully grown brown bears have no natural enemies. Their mortality rate is somewhat less than 5%. But for young animals, it is very different. A third of all cubs do not survive their first year, and about one in five die in their second. The next critical phase comes when they are driven away by their mother to become independent. About another third die as a result of this. Thus, their idyll is an illusion. Indeed, there are more bears here than in any other place he has visited, but every young bear that wants to settle here must drive out a dominant animal. In August, the days become noticeably shorter. The first northern lights flicker hesitantly in the night sky. For the coastal bears, a time of plenty starts. Now in late summer, the first salmon run comes in to spawn. This has nothing in common with the well-known salmon migration, which Andreas has seen so often at home in Europe. Pink salmon hardly leave saltwater to breed, and sometimes spawn while they are still in the tidal reaches of the fjord. Here, hardly any of the rivers reaches far inland, and there is no strong current for the salmon to overcome. This little bay, still filled with saltwater by the tide, is the end of the fish's journey. For Andreas, this is fine because he won't have to haul the heavy film equipment very far. He moves slowly and lets the bears know from a long way off that he is coming. As before, and as expected, they pay him no further attention. Round his boots, salmon swarm everywhere, eagerly searching for a partner or a good place to spawn. Andreas is overwhelmed by the sudden surge of life in what was such a quiet bay. It has always been his dream to film grizzlies against such a glorious backdrop. But it wouldn't be wise to imitate him. Only someone who can safely predict the reactions of the bears should try to film them so free and unprotected. After all these years, Andreas can judge what frame of mind they are in, and generally take good care to keep them peaceful. It is essential not to try to approach them, but instead to let them come to the camera. That way, there is no surprise, and the photographer offers no cause for alarm. All the same, Andreas is very tense. A lion tamer probably feels much the same with his big cats in the circus ring. This time, they are so close that he fears for the safety of the camera. If in the excitement of the moment they charge at him, he has hardly any chance of getting out of the way. The salmon here are not restricted as they would be in a river, and in theory, can easily escape the hunters. By far, the most attacks are in the first days of the run, when the fish are not yet completely exhausted. But experienced bears know how to get hold of their fast-moving prey. They drive them into shallow water near the bank, where they are stranded and can't escape. And then they have 4,000 more calories for their store of winter fat. In the early afternoon, the bay gradually becomes quiet. Most of the bears have filled their bellies and retreated. Only a couple of adolescents still tussle in the water, but even they are full and lethargic. The mother can now provide her young with so much fat fish and milk that they put on several kilos in weight every week. At the age of 10 months, some bear cubs weigh up to 50 kilos. For pregnant bears, the food supply before the onset of winter is especially important. Embryos develop normally only in females who have built up a large enough reserve of fat. If they are poorly nourished, the embryos will die. This is why females often fight for the best fishing places, even when there is an abundance of food. Oh. New snow lying on the mountains suggests that the bears will soon be hibernating. Andreas and Greg decide to set up a base camp. They are back on the mainland and go back to work near Greg's home village. Greg knows of bears' dens, which are visited every year in the fall, far up on the north slope of the mountain. Strangely enough, bears choose cold dens for their hibernation. In high places, they are protected against a thaw that comes too soon. It's not the cold that bears hide from, but hunger. They hibernate because there's nothing to eat in the winter months. If they woke too early because of warm weather, they would have to go hungry for a long time. The dens are often amazingly small. Most of them are only a short passage in a chamber, which is just big enough for the animal. In the northern part of their range, grizzlies spend as much as 60% of their life fast asleep in these little holes. This also seems to be the reason why bears are such different sizes. On Kodiak and the Aleutians, the climate is much milder than here on the mainland because they are surrounded by sea. Presumably, many bears on the Aleutians do not actually hibernate and can find enough food to remain active even in winter. Afterwards, they grow into the legendary giants. The expedition to the bear dens brings them back into the dry, cold climate of Alaska, where Andreas Keeling has lived for so long. While on the Aleutians, rain is still falling, and the bears have returned to eating mussels and grass after their feast of salmon, here is icy cold with a thick covering of snow everywhere. Soon, the sun will no longer rise, not even at midday. They spend their last days in the wilderness under the northern lights. Andreas and Greg's search for the giant bears is over. They have found them at the very end of the North American continent, where people seldom venture. The most impressive thing about grizzlies is their calmness. The really big bears are not bloodthirsty monsters. Instead, they are relaxed, peaceable animals. They might make impressive trophies, but to shoot them takes no skill or courage. It's better to let them live on undisturbed.