THE CHALLENGE
The Cub on the Right is an Alaskan Grizzly of the Big Brown Bear Type
The other little cub stood looking with awe into his mother’s moveless face, but at last shook off his fright and smelled her bloody head. Then, all forlorn, he turned to look eagerly into the face of the hunter, who had been watching the little cub all this while with big tears upon his cheeks. After a moment he took a step toward him, rose up, and trustingly put fore paws upon his knee, looking seriously, confidingly into his face. We carried these little orphans to camp, and the hunter raised them. Their mother was the last animal that he ever shot.
The cubs are born in the hibernating cave in January, February, or March, probably the majority in February. The number at birth commonly is two, but sometimes there are three and occasionally even four. Each is about the size of a chipmunk, weighing from ten to twenty ounces.
Generally the mother does not come forth for either food or drink for some weeks after the cubs are born. She stays in the den a month longer than bears without cubs. Curled around the little bears in the den, she nourishes them from her store of fat. The cubs grow slowly, and on leaving the den are often only a trifle larger than a cotton-tail rabbit, weighing from ten to fifteen pounds. The grizzly appears to give birth to cubs only every second year. Though yearlings have been seen with a mother and cubs, it is likely that they did not belong to her.
In proportion to the size of the mother, the grizzly is one of the smallest of animals at birth, weigh ing about one fifth of one per cent of her weight. A baby kangaroo at birth is even smaller proportionally, however, and is said to weigh less than one tenth of one per cent of the mother’s weight. A baby blue whale is about four per cent of the weight of the mother and sometimes weighs three tons and has a length of twenty-five feet.
Why is the young grizzly so small? It will readily be seen that while hibernating, neither eating nor drinking for a few months, the mother grizzly would not be able to nourish two or more very lusty youngsters. It is probable that in the process of evolution Nature selected the small grizzly cubs to perpetuate the species.
While visiting the Blackfeet Indians in western Montana one February, I saw a young Indian woman nursing two baby grizzly bears. The mother grizzly had been killed a day or two before and the cubs taken from the den. They were little bits of warm, pink life, scantily covered with hair. Each weighed not more than one pound. They were blind and toothless, but had sharp tiny claws. They had their eyes open in about fourteen days, and early began to cut their teeth. For several days the Indian woman suckled the cubs, then she fed them on cow’s milk and succeeded in raising them.
Many are the colors of grizzlies. I once saw a mother with four cubs, each of a different color. She herself was cream-colored, but one of the cubs was nearly black, another gray, the third brown, and the fourth black and white. A grizzly may be a blond, or a brunette, or one of half a dozen in-between shades. Often, as he ages, he becomes a "silver-tip." Probably dark gray is the prevailing color.