YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK — National Park Service (NPS) photographer Jacob W. Frank captured an image of a grizzly bear showing off its rump in Yellowstone National Park (YNP) earlier this week.
The park’s grizzlies will be wrapping up their major snack time soon and start heading toward winter dens.
The bear in Frank’s photo has dark fur on its behind and legs, and lighter fur covers its torso, shoulders and face. Grizzly bear fur ranges from black to blonde, frequently with white-tipped fur, giving the bear its name from a “silver-tipped” or grizzled appearance. Black bears in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem have fur that can vary from black to brown, cinnamon and blonde. The NPS warns that people should not rely on color and size alone when identifying a bear in the wild.
Grizzly bears are one of two subspecies of brown bear in North America. The same subspecies of bear is referred to as a brown bear in coastal Alaska, while inland bears without access to marine-derived food sources are called grizzly bears. The Kodiak bear is the other subspecies of brown bear in North America, residing only on the islands of the Kodiak Archipelago in the Gulf of Alaska.
In YNP, the best way to deduce a bear’s species from afar is by identifying its facial features and whether or not it has a shoulder hump. A grizzly bear will have a prominent hump behinds its ears, like in Frank’s photo, and its rear end will be be lower than its shoulders. A black bear, no matter the color, will not have a hump and its rump will typically be higher or at the same height as its shoulders.
Frank’s photo is also great for viewing the profile of the bear’s face, which is another indicator of its species. NPS says that grizzly bears will display a “dish-shaped profile” and a black bear’s snout profile will look straight from forehead to nose.
Check out the infographic to learn more about how to tell apart the two local bear species.
