LIVE GRIZZLY BEAR WEBCAM AT ZOO MONTANA

More Info: The grizzly bear, a subspecies of the brown bear ranges from Alaska through western Canada to isolated populations in Washington, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. They stand up to 2.5m and weigh up to 360kg and have white tipped or “grizzled” fur. They are distinguished from black bears by having a large hump on their back - a mass of powerful muscle which helps with digging in the search for food and excavating winter dens.

Grizzly bears are well adapted to survive the changing seasons. In the warmer months they will eat around 40kg of food per day, gaining over a kilo of weight daily, in order to prepare for the cold winter months when they will hibernate and live off their body fat. Their diet varies according to the seasons and what is available but will include fruit, leaves, roots, nuts, fish, berries and animals from small rodents to moose and elk.

Each year, grizzly bears gather in numbers, for the salmon run in Alaska. The bears catch salmon where the fish have to jump over rocks to make their way upstream. Some bears are better than fishing than others and the amount they eat depends on the abundance of salmon. If the fish are plentiful the bears may just eat the head and roe and discard the rest which provides a valuable source of food for other animals, scavengers and birds. If there are less fish then the bears will consume whole fish and even steal from each other.