John Sullivan, age 8, of St. Paul, Minnesota, for his question:
What is the average weight of a bear?
The average bear has dozens of cousins. All of them are the usual bulky bear shape. But they come in different sizes and the big types weigh more than the small ones. A grizzly may stand more than eight feet tall and weigh more than four tall, fat men. But he i's not the bulkiest bear in the world. On the small size of the family, the little sun bear may stand only three feet high and weigh just a few pounds more than you do.
The giant Kodiak bear lives in the far north. He may be nine feet tall and his average weight is around 1,600 pounds. This is more than 3/4 of a ton. The pretty little sun bear lives in Southeast Asia. His average height is between three and four feet. His average weight is between 60 and 100 pounds. It would take at least 16 of these small bears to equal the weight of one big Kodiak bear. Surely the average weight of a bear must be somewhere between these two.
Perhaps the middleweight champion is the American black bear. His name can fool you because his shaggy coat may not be black at all. He may be light brown or dark brown, ginger brown or even palish honey color. But black is a popular color in his family. Sometimes one of these brown mother bears has a brood of jet black cubs. Sometimes the cubs of a black bear may be black, or brown or honey colored. But, regardless of color, all of them belong to the American black bear family and all of them grow up to be average sized members of the bear world.
These are the bears we meet when we visit some of our wonderful wild National Parks. They are clownish characters, rather lazy and quite clever. And every one of them is a born moocher, full of plans to get himself free handouts from the visitors. This is a no no, as every sensible person knows. Wild bears must practice finding their own food, otherwise they forget how to feed themselves when the visitors depart. Another thing, these bears are never satisfied with free gifts. If we feed them and try to stop, they get nasty. And bears can get very nasty indeed.
Our average sized black bear stands five feet tall and his weight is between 200 and 500 pounds. You might say that the average weight of a bear is around 350 pounds. He weighs as much as about six, eight year old boys. This average American black bear has a shaggy coat stuffed with mighty muscles. When annoyed he knows just how to use them to whack a person dote. What's more, he also can punish a person with his big teeth and his powerful claws. He is nice to look at but for goodness sake, let's not annoy him.
Every summer, a few visitors get bashed by bears. But this is no reason to banish the bears from our National Parks. After all, they rightfully belong there. Most of them welcome visitors, in a rather grumpy way. So it's up to us to learn just what to do to keep them peaceful and the real secret is to keep them at a distance. It seems that sooner or later, almost all bears get annoyed with close human friends.