BEARS, DOGS, WOLVES, FOXES AND JACKALS

The bears (Ursidæ) stand lowest in the scale of rank among the Carnivora because they retain more than the others archaic characteristics in their anatomy. The family is singularly uniform—that is, all bears are much alike in their heavy bodies, broad heads, powerful limbs with "plantigrade" feet, resting the whole sole on the ground (whereas most other quadrupeds are "digitigrade," i. e., standing on their toes), and an extremely short tail, almost invisible in the coat of long hair that clothes their bodies. Distinction into species has been found difficult. An English naturalist once exclaimed that he knew but two in the whole world—the polar bear for one and all the rest for the other. At the other extreme the American systemist, Dr. C. Hart Merriam, announced in 1918 that the American brown and grizzly bears alone were divisible into eighty-eight species and subspecies, based on variations in their skulls! For ordinary readers all the big brown bears of Japan, Asia, Europe, and Canada, inclusive of the grizzlies (of which few now remain) may be regarded as one species; the polar bear, with its elongated head and body, and pure, white fur, as another; the small gray "glacier" bear of the St. Elias Alps in Alaska as another; the "blue" one of Tibet, the shaggy, long-lipped, sloth bear of India, and the miniature sun bear of Borneo, as three more; and finally the common yellowish-nosed American black bears, the Andean "spectacled" bear, and the very similar black bears of the Himalayas, as together constituting a seventh species.

WOLVES IN WESTERN NORTH AMERICA

BEAR IN A ROCKY MOUNTAIN FOREST

All these are as alike in habits, allowing for different surroundings and food supply, as in appearance. Eating everything from nuts, berries, and insects, to fish, ground squirrels, and big game, their dentition comprises not only powerful canines, but molars capable of smashing bones. Bears are too slow and clumsy, however, to do much as big game hunters, save, perhaps, the polar giant in seizing seals, and it is therefore necessity rather than choice that reduces these really formidable beasts to the petty business of nibbling berry bushes, digging up bulbs or the nests of wasps and gophers, and tearing rotten logs to pieces in hope of finding ants and beetle grubs. The most inveterate insect hunter of the tribe is the Indian sloth, or honey bear. Sir Samuel Baker remarks that its favorite delicacy is termites, for which it will scratch a large hole in the hardest soil to the depth of two or three feet. "The claws of the forepaws are three or four inches in length, and are useful implements for digging. It is astonishing to see the result upon soil that would require a pickax to excavate a hole." Having reached the large combs at the bottom of the cavity the bear blows the dust away with a strong puff, and then draws the honey and larvæ out of the comb into its mouth by sucking in its breath.

Nevertheless bears eat a good many young and small animals, and in the neighborhood of farms steal many calves, colts, and pigs. It is an animal to be feared by men when met, although as a rule bears are inclined to run away rather than resist, except when a she-bear feels that her young are in danger. Bears are rather solitary, the males wandering about alone, the females accompanied by cubs often as big as themselves. The young, two as a rule, are born in midwinter in the family den, which may be a rocky cave or the hollow of an old tree, the center of a dense thicket or simply a bed beneath the snow. The cubs at birth are surprisingly small—not larger than rabbits—and are naked, blind, and very slow to develop; hence the mother is extremely solicitous about them, and heedlessly brave in their defense. Bears hibernate only in the coldest regions.

Allied to the bears is the large black and white "coon bear" (Æluropus), a rare, vegetable-feeding brute of eastern Tibet, which is a relic of the Pleistocene. Near it in structure is the queer Ælurus of the same region, which connects the bears with our raccoons and those other "little brothers of the bear," the kinkajous and coatis of the American tropics.