Only eight bear species still walk the Earth
Bears (family Ursidae) are caniform carnivorans with just eight living species spread across continents. Polar bears lean meatward, giant pandas lean bamboo-ward, and the other six mix diets. Humans have hunted them for meat, fur, and cruel sport since prehistory.
The eight living bears span a huge size range. Male polar bears, the largest, weigh 350 to 700 kilograms and reach up to 3 metres long, while the sun bear tops out around 65 kilograms. Built for strength rather than speed, bears have short, straight, thick-boned limbs and massive shoulder blades and hips, and males are usually bigger than females, especially in the large species. Despite the lumbering gait they run, climb and swim well, and they rely on a superb sense of smell. Apart from courting pairs and mothers with cubs, they live alone.
The family began with small, raccoon-like animals such as Parictis in North America, 38 to 18 million years ago, which may have eaten like badgers. A dog-like Eurasian form, Cephalogale, led around 30 to 28 million years ago to Ursavus, the Asian genus ancestral to every living bear. Short-faced bears reached North America about 13 million years ago and later South America after the Isthmus of Panama formed; the prehistoric American short-faced bears were the biggest bears known. Around 5.3 to 4.5 million years ago the true bears radiated, and the termite-eating sloth bear descends from one of the earliest branches.
Today the family divides into three subfamilies: the giant panda alone, the spectacled bear alone, and six ursine species whose chromosomes are nearly identical and which have hybridised extensively. Red pandas and raccoons, sometimes called bears in other languages, are really musteloids.
Words for the animal are revealing. English bear comes from Old English bera, often said to mean the brown one, although Ringe notes no matching Proto-Indo-European word for brown exists. Greek arktos gave Arctic and Antarctic through the constellation of the Great Bear, and Latin ursa gave Ursula, little she-bear. Bern's name is traditionally linked to the German Bär. Humans have hunted bears for meat and fur since prehistory, and habitat loss and the illegal trade in parts, including bile, now press on them.
Source: Bear
