The brown bear (Ursus arctos) - largest of terraneous predators of Russia.
Weight of separate beasts reaches 450 kilogrammes
(Weight of the largest Kamchatka
bears reaches 600 kgs. Length of a body up to 2,55 m. Height
of beasts in a withers up to 1,35 m - the note of the writer of the website).
Usually there are the mature animals from 100 up to 200 kilogrammes.
The colouring of a bear is subject to
strong individual variability and varies from dark - brown, almost black, up to
light grey and straw-yellow.
At the bear-cubs on a neck and the breast are light marks, which with age disappear.
For mature beasts on a breast sometimes noticeably vague white stain.
The bear spreads on
all wood zone - from Western borders up to Pacific ocean,
and also in mountains of Caucasus and Central Asia.
It prefers aged mixed forests with a windfall, burned-out forests, marshes and
river valleys. In mountains bears dwell in little-afforest
places and occasionally meet on the Alpine pratums.
The composition of
nutrition of the bear depends on a season of year and crop of
those or other forages. By abandoning a hole the beasts feed
ants, propagules of an aspen, seek for the corpses of
animals, which has perished by winter. Pursue on thin
crust of ice over snow after the elks. In main they exist at
the expense of fat, which has stayed after winter dream.
When melts snow, the bears eat the overwintered baccas, green
plantlets. A little bit later bear eats fresh leafs of aspens,
many umbrella plants, and also every possible shallow animal
and bird's ovums. In middle of a summer the bears feed
different baccas in process of their maturing. In Siberia an
essential forage to the bears are the cedar nuts, and in
austral districts of country - hazel, acorns, chestnuts,
foetus of feral fruit arbors
(On Kamchatka the bears feed a
spawn salmon fish - the note of the writer of the website).
The bear is omnivorous, but it needs a lot of nutrition. To save sufficient quantity of fat for winter, bear
eats up to 700 kgs of berries or up to half-ton of cedar nuts, not considering
other forages. In case of poor harvest of berries in northern areas bears visit
crops of oats, and in southern - crops of corn.
In years of poor forages some bears assault livestock, ruin apiaries.
Winter - most hungry and severe time -
the bears sleep at lair. Bears fall into not real hibernation, at which the
animals run into an anabiosis, but sensitive dream.
When the bear lays at lair without movement, its cardiopulmonary activity
is reduced. Temperature of a body changes between 29 and 34 degrees.
After 5- 10 sighes come a pause, which sometimes lasts about 4 minutes. In such
state the organism of an animal rather economically spends a stock of fat,
accrued during autumn.
If the bear, disturbed by someone, has risen
from lair, all its bodies begin actively to work, it quickly grows thin, the
forage is necessary for it. In this case a bear turns to the wanderer or, as
speak in the people, to a "shatun". A "shatun" - animal, dangerous. It is
hungry and angry. In searches of a forage it, attracted by a smell of nutrition,
fairly often leaves to camp of the woodcutters. Sometimes bear does attempts to
kill the elk or any other animal.
It is accepted to consider, that for winter dream the bear
chooses a place most outlying from human habitation. It's not always so.
The bear is forced to a neighbourhood with the human beings.
The animals fairly often arrange lair near to roads, on opening in wood and in
various other places frequently visited by the people.
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