Kodiak Bear and Sun Bear: World's Largest and Smallest Bears

Bears are found in Europe, Asia, and the Americas. They have many different sizes, colors, habits, and habitats. The largest and smallest members of the family-the Kodiak bear and the sun bear respectively -are different in just about every way.

The bear family is called Ursidae (from Latin ursus, "bear"). Bears are closely related to dogs and raccoons. As a family, they are omnivores, though feeding preferences vary by species. They do not truly hibernate, but they sleep fitfully during most of the winter. Bears typically live 15-30 years in the wild but much longer in captivity.

Brown bears are a common shaggy-haired, usually brown species (Ursus arctos) with many different subspecies in Eurasia and North America. The North American brown bears are called grizzly bears.

Grizzlies come in more than 80 different forms, and they range throughout the western United States and Canada all the way up to Alaska. They have humped shoulders, a high forehead, and brownish to buff fur. Many forms grow to about 8 feet in length and 900 pounds in weight.

The largest grizzly, the largest bear in the world, and, in fact, the world's largest living land carnivore is the Kodiak bear, which can grow to more than 10 feet long and weigh as much as 1,700 pounds.

The Kodiak bear is named after its principal place of habitation, Kodiak Island, which lies in the Gulf of Alaska. The island is 100 miles long and 10-60 miles wide. The Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge covers 75 percent of the island and helps protect the Kodiak bear. The bear feeds mainly on salmon, which is more abundant on Kodiak Island than anywhere else in Alaska.

At the opposite end of the bear spectrum is the sun bear. While the Kodiak bear lives on a cold island in Alaska, the sun bear lives in the hot forests of southern Asia, Java, Sumatra, and Borneo. And while the Kodiak bear is the world's largest bear, the sun bear is the world's smallest bear.

The sun bear (Helarctos malayanus or Ursus malayanus) is 3-4 feet long and weighs 60-140 pounds. It has short, glossy, mostly black fur except for an orange-yellow crescent-shaped band on the chest. According to local legends, the chest crescent represents the sun, hence the name sun bear.

The sun bear is a nocturnal, tree-climbing animal. It uses its large forepaws and long, curved claws to dig for insect nests, especially those of bees and termites. It also eats fruit and small vertebrates. One of its favorite foods is honey, hence its secondary name honey bear.

The sun bear is shy, intelligent, and easily tamed.
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Encyclopaedia Britannica Ready Reference 2004 (CD-ROM).

The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1989.