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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00:00American black bears are the most common bear in North America and can be found from northern
00:10Mexico through the US to northern Canada.
00:14They are smaller than polar bears and brown bears, which also makes them the smallest
00:20of North America's three bears.
00:24Black bears are about three feet tall at the shoulder when standing on all fours and up
00:28to seven feet tall when standing upright on two legs.
00:34Males can be up to 60% bigger than females and weigh up to 660 pounds.
00:41Black bears are usually black, as their name suggests, but their coats may also be brown,
00:47cinnamon or even white.
00:52This coat variation means they are occasionally mistaken for brown bears, especially where
00:57the ranges of the two species overlap.
01:01To help tell them apart, the US National Park Service notes that black bears do not have
01:06a pronounced shoulder hump, like brown bears do, and their shoulders are lower than their
01:11rumps when standing on all fours.
01:15Black bears also have straighter faces, taller ears and shorter, more curved front claws.
01:22They use these claws to scale trees and access food.
01:28Black bears are omnivores and most of their diet is made up of insects, nuts, berries,
01:36grasses and other vegetation.
01:41They are not active predators and only hunt mammals such as young deer when the opportunity
01:44presents itself.
01:47But a black bear is no slouch either and can run at up to 35 miles per hour if needed.
01:55Bears often avoid encounters with people and do not normally harm humans.
01:59However, they occasionally attack to defend their cubs or food and on extremely rare occasions
02:06kill humans to eat them.
02:10Even so, bears have far more reason to fear humans.
02:14Black bears and the forests they lived in rapidly declined after Europeans settled in
02:18North America and they are still regularly hunted by humans today.
02:23However, greater protections has enabled the bear population to slowly recover.
02:32American black bears are not currently threatened with extinction and their population is estimated
02:36to be twice as large as all other bear populations on Earth.
02:44For more information visit www.fema.gov