American Black Bear

The American black bear is the most common and widely distributed bear species in North America, ranging across forests from Alaska and Canada down through the United States and into parts of Mexico. Despite its name, its fur varies widely from black to brown, cinnamon or even pale blond depending on the region, and it is generally smaller and less aggressive than the grizzly bear with which its range sometimes overlaps. An opportunistic omnivore, it feeds on berries, nuts, insects, small mammals and carrion, and it is an agile climber that often escapes danger by scaling trees, a habit cubs retain into adulthood more than most other bears. In colder parts of its range it spends winter in a den in a state of reduced activity rather than true hibernation, living off stored fat reserves. Once persecuted heavily across much of the eastern United States, the species has rebounded strongly through conservation and now numbers in the hundreds of thousands, the healthiest population of any bear species in the world.