Grizzly Bear

The name “grizzly bear” refers to the silver-tipped or “grizzled” hair of a brown bear.

Grizzly bears were so feared and respected by Native Americans that hunting them required a company of four to ten warriors and was done with the same preparation and ceremoniality as intertribal warfare.

The first successful operation to remove cataracts from both eyes on a grizzly bear took place on November 5, 1850 at London's Zoological Gardens.

Hercules, a trained grizzly bear, escaped from a film set on the Isle of Benbecula in the Outer Hebrides on August 20, 1980. He was being filmed for a Kleenex advert at the time. The search for Hercules involved hundreds of volunteers and lasted for 24 days. He was eventually found on the Isle of North Uist, about 20 miles away from where he had escaped. He was shot with a tranquilizer dart and captured in a net.

Hercules was unharmed during his escape, but he had lost a significant amount of weight. He was taken back to his owners, Andy and Maggie Robin, and nursed back to health. He went on to live a long and happy life, and he even appeared in a few films, including the James Bond movie Octopussy.

A hunter named Chase Dellwo, survived a Grizzly bear attack by shoving his arm down the bear's throat in October 2015. While being attacked in Great Falls Montana, Dellwo remembered an article his grandmother gave him about bears having bad gag reflexes. He shoved his arm down the Grizzlys throat and it retreated.

Grizzly bears can remember the faces of other bears they have not seen for ten years or more.

Grizzly bears sometimes cover their tracks for protection against hunters.

An adult grizzly bear can run as fast as your regular horse.

Grizzly bears have a bite-force of over 8,000,000 pascals, enough to crush a bowling ball.

30,000 grizzly bears now live in Alaska. Once plentiful across western North America, only around 1,000 remain in the rest of US, with an estimated 20,000 in Canada.

The grizzly bear is the California state animal, in spite of the fact it is extinct in California.

Polar bears sometimes inter-breed with grizzly bears creating a hybrid bear known as a prizzly bear, or a grolar bear.

Despite their intimidating physiques, grizzly bears more often dine on berries, fruits, nuts and roots than red meat.