Bears have evolved throughout many, many years. There are multiple different types of bears including the brown bear, polar bear, panda bear, etc. Before bears, there were, and still are, animals like raccoons and lesser pandas. The bears’ closest “relatives” would be found in the pinniped, canid, and musteloid families. Bears are found in the ursidae family. The bears’ evolution started around 30 million years ago.
Early ancestors of bears compare to bears now because they have some of the same features and they have different features that changed because of genes from other animals. Their ancestors evolved into a family of smaller animals known as miacids. Some species, like dogs, resemble bears. Some dogs are referred to as “bear dogs.”
…show more content…
Projects based on bears also focus on the asiatic black bear, the sun bear, and the sloth bear. Bears are carnivores, meaning they eat both meat and vegetation. The bear’s diet consists of things like berries, nuts, grass, fruit, insects, roots, and bulbs. They will hunt small animals and brown bears specifically, when near a coast, will feed on fish, particularly salmon. Other bears, like the polar bear scavenge for carcasses of the beluga whale, walruses, narwhals, and bowhead whales.
Different types of bears live in different climates. For example, The brown bear can live in deserts, mountains, forests, and ice fields. Other types of bears can live in the rainforests, tundra, and even medows and coastlines. A large population of grizzly bears live in Alaska and Canada. Black bears typically live in forests, but are also found in mountains and swamps.
Modern relatives of a brown bear vary. Their modern relatives are partially other bears such as polar bears, panda bears, black bears, etc. Other than different types of bears, their modern relatives would include koala bears, lesser panda, and the red panda. The brown bear can be recognized by their distinct feature of the shoulder hump. Bears, such as the brown bear, have long claws that help them dig through soil and breaks things apart to find