Black Bears: The Most Common Bear in North America
American black bears are the smallest and most common bear in North America. They are highly adaptable, with a diet that includes honey and moose.
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00:03 American black bears are the most common bear
00:08 in North America and can be found from northern Mexico
00:10 through the US to northern Canada.
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00:16 They are smaller than polar bears and brown bears,
00:18 which also makes them the smallest of North America's
00:21 three bears.
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00:24 Black bears are about three feet tall at the shoulder
00:27 when standing on all fours and up to seven feet tall
00:29 when standing upright on two legs.
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00:33 Males can be up to 60% bigger than females
00:36 and weigh up to 660 pounds.
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00:41 Black bears are usually black, as their name suggests,
00:44 but their coats may also be brown, cinnamon, or even white.
00:51 This coat variation means they're occasionally
00:53 mistaken for brown bears, especially
00:57 where the ranges of the two species overlap.
01:01 To help tell them apart, the US National Park Service
01:04 notes that black bears do not have a pronounced shoulder
01:07 hump like brown bears do, and their shoulders
01:10 are lower than their rumps when standing on all fours.
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01:15 Black bears also have straighter faces, taller ears,
01:18 and shorter, more curved front claws.
01:22 They use these claws to scale trees and access food.
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01:28 Black bears are omnivores, and most of their diet
01:30 is made up of insects, nuts, berries, grasses,
01:37 and other vegetation.
01:41 They are not active predators and only
01:42 hunt mammals such as young deer when
01:44 the opportunity presents itself.
01:47 But a black bear is no slouch either
01:50 and can run at up to 35 miles per hour if needed.
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01:55 Bears often avoid encounters with people
01:57 and do not normally harm humans.
02:00 However, they occasionally attack
02:02 to defend their cubs or food and, on extremely rare occasions,
02:06 kill humans to eat them.
02:09 Even so, bears have far more reason to fear humans.
02:14 Black bears and the forest they lived in
02:16 rapidly declined after Europeans settled in North America,
02:20 and they are still regularly hunted by humans today.
02:24 However, greater protections has enabled the bear population
02:27 to slowly recover.
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02:32 American black bears are not currently
02:33 threatened with extinction, and their population
02:35 is estimated to be twice as large as all other bear
02:38 populations on Earth.
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02:56 (upbeat music)
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