25 Terrifying Facts about Bears

There used to be a polar bear at the Tower of London which was fed by putting a leash on it and letting it fish in the Thames. It was gifted by King Haakon of Norway in 1252.

2. Grizzly Bear #122 of Banff National Park, the largest bear in the area, has eaten a couple of black bears, has fathered 5 cubs and was hit by a train and lived.

3. Binky, the polar bear that lived in Alaska Zoo mauled two visitors who jumped over the safety rails on separate occasions. After the maulings, Binky merchandise was sold with the slogan “Send another tourist, this one got away” and his cage was upgraded to keep visitors out.

4. The panda's gut isn't suited to digesting bamboo and can only digest 17% of the bamboo it eats. Instead, it is more suited to eating meat, like other species of bears.

5. A grizzly bear's bite is estimated to be strong enough to crush a bowling ball.

A bear named Wojtek fought in the Polish Army during World War 2. He carried shells to the frontline and was taught to salute.

7. Polar bears actually have black skin and clear hollow fur. The clear and hollow fur enables the sun rays to get to the black skin that keeps the polar bears warm in the cold climate.

8. A group of panda is called an Embarrassment.

9. Grizzly bears were so feared and respected by Native Americans that hunting them required a company of 4 to 10 warriors and was done with the same preparation and ceremoniality as intertribal warfare.

10. The part of the reason it is so hard to get Pandas to mate is that the female Panda is only fertile for a short period in the spring. Their sexual interest lasts just 24-72 hours per year.

A bear cub named Winnipeg was exported from Canada to the London Zoo in 1915. A little boy named Christopher Robin Milne loved to visit Winnipeg (or Winnie for short) and his love for the bear cub inspired the stories written by his father, A.A. Milne, about Winnie-the-Pooh.

12. Certain bears in Russia have become addicted to sniffing Jet Fuel out of discarded barrels. They are going as far as stalking helicopters for the drops of fuel they leave behind.

13. A group of up to 30 bears surrounded and attacked a remote Russian platinum mine in 2008, killing two security guards and trapping 400 people there.

14. All polar bears alive today can trace their ancestry back to one female brown bear who lived in Ireland.

15. Some black bears are born white and are called Spirit bears. They are not albino or polar bears.

Pandas can poop up to 48 pounds per day.

17. Pablo EskoBear was a nickname given to a 175lb black bear that died from a drug overdose after he consumed about half his own weight in cocaine. The bear was later stuffed and it is now a tourist attraction in Kentucky. He currently has a note hanging around his neck warning: “Don't do drugs.”

18. 12,000 bears are farmed for their bile in Asia which is used in traditional Chinese medicine. They generate $2 billion per year. Farming always involves surgery on the bears to insert a catheter or to cut a hole through the abdomen by which the bile leaks. Bear bile has no medicinal effect.

19. Brown bears can achieve running speeds of 48 kilometers per hour (30mph) or as fast as a racehorse.

20. When hungry bears tear into a beehive, they are actually looking for tasty bee larvae, which they much prefer over the plentiful honey inside.

Polar bears have a bone inside their penis to keep an erection going, and global pollution is causing this bone to weaken to the point where they are breaking.

22. Bears have favorite trees that they travel for miles to scratch their back on.

23. Female black bears delay the implantation of their fertilized eggs for months, effectively timing when they will give birth, and aborting the pregnancy if they are not healthy enough to rear cubs.

24. Chi Chi, a giant panda was sexually attracted to humans and refused attempts at mating by other giant pandas. Instead, she made full sexual self-presentation to zookeepers.

25. Bart, a Kodiak bear starred in dozens of Hollywood films opposite the likes of Dan Aykroyd, Anthony Hopkins, Annette Bening, Ethan Hawke, Gregory Peck, and John Candy. His biopic was narrated by Brad Pitt, with whom he worked in Legends of the Fall.