Formozov A.N. Pathfinder's Companion

10/27/2009 | Pathfinder: Reading animal tracks

Animal tracks, i.e. the imprints they leave on snow or mud, as well as on grass, especially during dew, have great importance for hunting: using the tracks of animals, they are found (tracked) and laid down, their number, gender, age are recognized, as well as whether the animal is wounded and even how badly it is wounded.

Wild animals lead a secretive lifestyle. Thanks to their well-developed sense of smell, hearing and vision, animals and birds notice a person before he notices them, and if they do not immediately run away or fly away, they hide, and their behavior becomes atypical. Traces of their vital activity help the observer to unravel the secrets of the animals’ lives. This means not only the imprints of the limbs, but also all the changes that animals make to surrounding nature.

In order to correctly use the discovered tracks, you need to know who they belong to, how long ago they were left by the animal, where the animal was going, as well as its methods of movement. How to learn to recognize animal tracks? To determine the freshness of a trace, it is necessary to tie together the biology of the animal, the weather conditions in this moment and a few hours ago and other information. For example, in the morning a moose track was discovered, not covered with snow that had fallen the day before from the afternoon until the evening. The freshness of the trail is beyond doubt - it is nocturnal.

The freshness of a trace can also be determined by touch. In freezing conditions in dry snow, a fresh footprint does not differ in looseness from the surface of the surrounding snow. After some time, the walls of the trace harden, and the lower the temperature, the more strongly - the trace “hardens”. Any other trace left by a large animal becomes harder over time, and the more time passes from the moment the trace is formed, the harder it becomes. Traces of small animals left on the surface of deep snow do not harden. It is important to find out whether the animal has been here since the evening or passed an hour ago. If the trail is old, more than a day, then it is useless to look for the animal that left it, it is already far away, out of reach. If the trail left is fresh, then the animal may be somewhere nearby. To determine the direction of movement of an animal, you need to know the peculiarities of the placement of the limbs of different animals. Taking a closer look at a single track of a large animal left in loose deep snow, you can notice the difference between the walls of the track along the path of the animal.

On one side they are flatter, on the other they are steeper. These differences arise because the animals lower their limbs (legs, paws) gently, and take them out of the snow almost vertically upward. These differences are called: dragging - the rear wall and dragging - the front wall of the trace. The trail is always longer than the drag, which means that the animal moved in the direction where the short, that is, steeper walls of the track are directed. When the animal removes its leg, it presses on the front wall, compacting it, while the back wall does not deform. Sometimes, in order to accurately determine the direction of movement of the animal, it is necessary to hurry it up, observing the handwriting of the trail.

The gait of an animal, or the gait of its movement, comes down to two types: slow or moderate fast movement(walk, trot, amble) and fast running with successive jumps (gallop, quarry).

Animals with an elongated body and short limbs most often move at a moderate gallop. They are simultaneously pushed off by the hind limbs and fall exactly into the prints of the forelimbs. The legacy with such a gait is paired prints of only the hind limbs (most mustelids).

Sometimes, during a slow gallop, one or both hind legs of the animal does not reach the prints of the front ones, and then groups of tracks of three and four prints, called three- and four-legged, appear. Less often, long-bodied and short-legged animals move to the quarry, and then when jumping they put their hind paws in front of their front paws, and therefore the prints of their hind paws are in front of their front paws (hares, squirrels).

To determine the freshness of a trace, you need to divide the trace with a thin twig. If the trail is easily divided, then it is fresh; if it is not divided, it is old, more than a day old.

Boar tracks on the ground

Boar tracks in the snow

Wolf footprint on the ground

Wolf footprint in the snow

Lynx tracks

Bear tracks

Deer tracks

When moving at a walk or trot, animals rearrange their limbs in a cross shape: the front right and rear left paws are brought forward, then the other pair. When walking slowly, the front limb of the animal touches the ground slightly earlier than the hind limb, and when trotting, the front and hind limbs opposite sides fall to the ground at the same time.

At a slow pace, prints hind paw remain somewhat behind and to the side of the front imprint. During the middle step, the animal places its hind leg in the imprint of its front leg. In a large trot, the print of the hind leg may be located slightly in front of the front line. Consequently, from the pattern of the prints one can judge whether the animal moved slowly or quickly. Ambling is a movement in which an animal simultaneously moves both right or both left limbs (sometimes horses, bears).

Clear footprints are only found on dense wet snow, silt and soft clay. On loose soil or loose snow, animal tracks form a series of shapeless holes without claws or fingers.

An animal's track looks different not only due to the animals' gaits, but also due to the condition of the soil on which the animals move. The footprint also changes depending on the hardness or softness of the soil. Ungulates, when moving calmly on hard soil, leave imprints of two hooves. These same animals, when running and jumping on soft ground, leave prints of four hooves. Having five toes on their front paws, the otter and beaver leave a four-toed footprint on soft ground. The tracks also change as the animals age. In older animals, the tracks are larger and of a different shape. Piglets rest on two fingers, and their parents on four.

Adult dogs rest on four toes, while puppies use five. The footprints of males and females are also different, but only experienced trackers can discern the differences. As the seasons change, the tracks of animals change, as the paws of some of them become overgrown with rough long hair, which makes it easier to move on loose snow (marten, lynx, white hare, fox, etc.).

If you enter a summer forest during the day, it will seem that only birds and insects live in it. In winter, it may appear completely uninhabited. However, is there something? What betrays the animal presence are their paw prints. The tracks of a bear and elk, a fox and a wolf, a hare and a mouse clearly tell the observer that these creatures inhabit the forest area.

What is trace freshness and how is it determined?

It is interesting for the observer, and important for the hunter, to know when this or that trace was left. The animal passed here a few days ago, or maybe hours? Or is it still running somewhere ahead? This is indicated by such a concept as the freshness of the trace.

If it snowed late in the evening or at night, then a bear’s paw print found in the morning will indicate that it is nocturnal and no more than a few hours old. You should be careful, because in winter only the connecting rod bear can leave its prints.

Experts suggest determining the freshness of a trace by touch. If it is frosty outside and the snow is dry, then at first its boundaries will not differ in looseness from the rest of the surface. Over time, the walls of the footprint harden. This process directly depends on the air temperature. How stronger frost, the faster the edges of the print become solid. But this only applies to large animals, for example, if they are tracks or a wolf. Because small animals leave imprints on the surface. And there the hardening is not noticeable.

How to determine the direction of movement of an animal?

To do this, you need to carefully examine the tracks in the snow. Animals that are quite large in size can be easily identified by the size of their print. The observer may notice that its walls are different.

On the side where the trail has the back wall, a flatter edge will be visible. This is explained by the fact that the animal places its limbs hollow and takes them out of the snow almost vertically. These boundaries even have their own names: dragging and dragging, respectively. The drag is always shorter than the drag. That is, the front wall is steeper than the back. Therefore, the animal moved in the direction the dragging was directed.

How to recognize the gait of an animal by its footprint?

In other words, the gait of movement. It comes in two types. The first characterizes a slow and moderately fast pace of movement. It distinguishes between walk, trot and amble. The second comes down to running fast with successive jumps. Here they are already talking about gallop and career.

Animal tracks left during a moderate gallop in the snow are pairs of imprints of the hind limbs. This is explained by the fact that they push off with their hind legs and place them exactly in the recesses from the front ones. This gait is characteristic of animals with an elongated body and short legs, for example, the marten. If the animal is not in a hurry, then it may not reach the prints with its paws. Then groups of three or four tracks appear.

There are small animals that can move into the quarry. These are squirrels and hares. Their gait is characterized by the fact that the hind legs are thrown forward of the front ones. And the prints on the snow look the same: the dots of the front ones are behind the prints of the back ones.

Exciting bear tracks

These prints are alarming. Especially in winter or in early spring when the animal is hungry. If you encounter a bear's footprint in the snow, you can be relatively calm only in mid-autumn, when it goes into hibernation. But you can also see his prints in the summer on the loose sand of the bank of a river or other body of water where he came to fish.

Indeed, meeting a bear and causing its rage is dangerous. Because it reaches a height of about two and a half meters, and its weight can be more than three centners. It's better to avoid the beast.

About the polar bear track

Due to the nature of its habitat, its prints are always visible, unless it has passed through pure ice. Footprints polar bear not the same as those of his dark relatives. The print of his front paw clearly shows the pads of his toes. In addition, due to the fact that he has fewer calluses, the outlines of the footprint look neat. Since the polar bear's claws hardly bend, they leave barely noticeable marks on the snow. And this despite the fact that these claws are very impressive in size!

The hind paw of a polar bear leaves a pattern like the foot of a person shod in fur. If the snow is loose, claw grooves will be noticeable. The animal's fur leaves stripes on the snow near the paw prints. It looks as if a broom was passed along the path next to the prints.

What does a brown bear's front paw print look like?

This bear track always has clear imprints of the pads of all five fingers. Five deep grooves are clearly visible in front of these spots. They are formed from long and slightly curved claws. Behind them, a wide imprint is clearly visible, resembling a kidney in appearance. It remains from the metacarpal crumb. This print is from inside more narrow. Its outer edge is wider.

What does a brown bear's hind paw print look like?

Such a bear track will always consist of an imprint of the animal's full sole. It is akin to the drawing that would result if a barefoot man with pronounced flat feet stood in the snow. But there is one serious difference. Human toes shrink from inner edge to the outside. On the bear's paw everything is exactly the opposite. The toe on the inside of the foot is the smallest, and the rest get larger as they approach the outside of the foot. The claws on the hind legs are much shorter and more curved. But even here they leave a noticeable pattern near each finger.

Age of the bear based on its tracks

If we talk about the age of the animal, it can be determined by the size of the tracks. An example is the size of the metacarpal crumb of the front paw. Its approximate values ​​are given in the table.

The length of the hind paw print of an adult bear can reach 31 cm. And it is no coincidence that the “club-toed” bear received its characteristic. He actually places his paws so that the toes point inward and the heel points outward.

What other marks do bears leave?

In addition to tracks on the ground and snow, you can also see other marks in the forest that these animals make.

The first thing to start with is tracks in feeding areas. For example, in the spring, when hungry bears emerge from their dens, they often empty anthills. Animals destroy their tops in order to get to insects and larvae. In autumn, bears are not averse to eating fruits from trees. There are always a lot of broken branches left in their feeding area.

The next noticeable signs of a bear's habitat are marks on it. This could be a scratch or a bite, abrasion or a tear.

The abrasion is caused by friction against the bark when the bear stands on its hind legs. An animal can scrape a tree with its withers or the back of its head, its back or its chest. The bear makes a snack by standing on its hind legs and grabbing the bark with its teeth. The beast also does the bully thing while standing on its hind legs. Then he stretches his front paw up and pulls it down the trunk. As a result, narrow strips of cut bark appear at the bottom of the tree.

Bear cubs crawl through trees. At the same time, they clasp the trunk with their front paws. Four long, deep, oblique scratches remain on the bark. The fifth claw is not involved in this process. The scratches are directed from top to bottom and to the middle. For convenience, the cubs rest against the trunk with their hind paws. In this case, the claws dig deep into the bark.

Traces of other animals in the snow

• Wolf. Its tracks can be difficult to distinguish from those of a dog. The main feature is how the outer fingers are positioned. In dog tracks they move further away from the heel. And they also end at a different distance. If this is the footprint of a wolf, then the ends of the prints of the side fingers slightly reach the beginning of those in the middle. In a dog, their endings will be on almost half of the inner fingers.
• Fox. Externally, its tracks are very similar to those of a dog. But they have a peculiarity: they are stretched into a thin chain.
• Boar. Their hooves are small and cloven. If they are left on the snow, the marks will be deep. Because this beast is heavy, and the snow cannot support it.
• Elk. Similar to wild boar, but significantly bigger size. And the elk’s stride is noticeably wider.
• Mouse. She leaves a chain of two parallel stripes of small traces.

Of course, today bears are not as common as they used to be. But it’s still advisable to know what a bear’s track looks like in different time of the year. On the one hand, this is useful and can help avoid mortal danger while walking and picking mushrooms. On the other hand, this is interesting, since not everyone can understand animal tracks. Well, just in case, we’ll tell you about the traces not only brown bears, but also other species of these powerful animals. You never know where life will take you...

Brown bear

The brown bear is a predator from the bear family. The genus of bears has the scientific name Ursus, and the species brown bear in Latin is called Ursus arctos, or common bear.

Once upon a time, one could find traces of a brown bear anywhere in Europe. He lived in northwestern Africa, Siberia and China. Sometimes I went to Japan. About 40 thousand years ago, brown bears were brought from Asia to North America. But today in wildlife There are few bears left, and this animal is rare within its former range.

Different populations of brown bears have significant differences, so many independent subspecies have been identified. In fact, these subspecies are geographical races. The smallest bear footprint belongs to the European brown subspecies. The largest imprint is of a subspecies living in Kamchatka and Alaska.

Bear paw

The bear's front paw is a universal device. With the help of powerful claws, the animal can dig a winter shelter (den), excavate a gopher or marmot hole during a hunt, pry and turn over heavy stones or logs, break a tree, catch and gut fish.

With the long claws of its front and hind paws, the bear clings perfectly to the ground. This allows the animal to stay on slippery river rocks and climb steep slopes and snowfields. If a bear needs to climb a tree, then long and powerful claws are used again. By the way, the bear cub, using its claws to fix itself, climbs trees faster than an electrician in special boots can climb a pole. The claws on the front paws grow over 10 cm. On the hind paws they are 5-6 cm.

Bears don’t know how to retract their claws; they’re not cats. But they learned to masterfully use their formidable weapons. Thus, during salmon spawning, animals know how to carefully open the belly of the fish, as if using a sharp knife, in order to feast on the delicious and nutritious caviar.

Features of walking

Bears are plantigrade animals. When moving, they rest their paw on the entire foot. The lower plane of the bear's feet is bare. There are 5 toe calluses on the front paws, often called pads. Below the finger calluses there is a thick transverse corn (callus). The transverse one is clearly imprinted into soft ground or snow, making the bear's paw print recognizable.

Everyone is already accustomed to the fact that a bear is called clubfoot. This is actually true. While walking, the toes of the paws turn inward, while the heel looks outward.

Hind paw print

The bear's hind paw leaves a more elongated trail. If the animal walks slowly, a clear imprint of the heel remains.

It is very convenient to look at bear tracks in the snow, on soft ground, on sand, or after rain on dirt paths. When an animal walks slowly, the front and back paws are imprinted side by side. If the bear walks quickly or starts running, then the prints of the front paws overlap with its hind paws.

A person with severe flat feet leaves footprints barefoot, which are somewhat similar to the footprints of brown bears. But there is a noticeable difference: on the human foot, the reduction of the toes goes from the inner to the outer edge, in bears it’s the other way around.

Track sizes

Since brown bears of different subspecies have different sizes, it is only possible to determine how large the animal is approximately. It is advisable to know the tracks of which subspecies of bear can be found in a given area.

Let's look at the tracks of bears found in the taiga. Be sure to pay attention to the prints of the front paws:

• cubs of the year leave prints 5-7 cm wide;
• overwintered one-and-a-half-year-old bear cubs leave tracks 8-10 cm wide;
• female bears at the age of four leave tracks up to 12 cm wide;
• if the bear's footprint is 14-17 cm, then it is an adult animal;
• especially large seasoned males leave a mark up to 20 cm wide.

Often differences in the size of the animal depend on living conditions. Bear cubs grow more slowly in a lean year. Animals that have lost their mother early will also be smaller.

Polar bear

About 600 thousand years ago, the polar bear separated from a common ancestor with the brown species. It occupied its ecological niche, received a number of morphological differences from its ancestor, but remained genetically similar to it.

The polar bear is the largest beast of prey, living in Russia. A mature male can weigh 650-800 kg. The body length of the animal is 200-250 cm plus a relatively small tail. The predator's paws are powerful and huge. The footprint of a polar bear is different from that of its brown counterpart. The animal's feet are wider and longer, and its toes are connected by thick swimming membranes. The polar bear's claws are thick and curved, they are much shorter than those of the brown bear, but are more adapted to moving on ice.

The undersides of the front and hind paws are overgrown with thick hair; modest areas on the paw pads remain smooth. The forelimbs still have an ungrown transverse callus, which is significantly narrower than that of the brown species.

Bear tracks in the snow, left by the front paws, are distinguished by noticeable imprints of thick claws. But the claws do not imprint on the ground.

An inexperienced traveler may confuse the impression of a polar bear's hind paws with footprints human legs in warm fur shoes. The paw prints of brown bears are vaguely similar to the footprints of human bare feet.

He is a frequent hero of many children's fairy tales, where, unlike the evil wolf and sly fox is more of a positive character, a kind of good-natured giant. In reality, a bear is not always as good-natured as in fairy tales and can be quite dangerous. Since ancient times, his image was surrounded by a certain halo of benevolence and awe, and our ancestors, the ancient Slavs, even revered the bear as a sacred animal, to some extent personifying the very spirit of the forest.

Bear: description, structure, characteristics. What does a bear look like?

Currently, the bear is the largest land predator on our planet. Having appeared on Earth about 6 million years ago, it immediately became the personification of power and strength.

Depending on the species, the body length of a bear can range from 1.2 to 3 meters, with a weight from 40 kg to a ton. The bear's body itself is large, stocky, with a thick, short neck and a large head.

The bear's powerful jaws make it easy and convenient to gnaw both plant and animal food. The bear's paws are short and slightly curved; for this reason, bears walk with a slight sway and rest on the entire foot. It is precisely because of this anatomical feature Due to the structure of bear paws, the nickname “clubfoot” has been attached to them since ancient times. Although, despite their “clubfoot” and apparent clumsiness, bears are very fast and agile - the speed of a bear chasing prey or in moments of danger can reach up to 50 km per hour.

And bears are not only excellent runners, but also no less good swimmers, they are excellent swimmers, and polar bears even have special membranes between their paws, all for ease of swimming.

Bears can also climb trees. All these features make meeting a clubfoot in the forest very undesirable and dangerous, because if something happens, you can’t hide from it either in a tree or in the water.

A bear's hearing, however, like its vision, is not its strengths(it’s not for nothing that there is even a saying about a person deprived of hearing for music - “a bear stepped on his ear”). But these shortcomings are more than compensated for by the excellent sense of smell that all bears have. It is thanks to smells that bears navigate the surrounding space and receive the necessary information about what is happening around them.

All bears are covered with thick fur. The color of a bear’s fur depends on its species, and sometimes determines its name: brown bear, polar bear. Interesting fact: bears with dark fur, like people, turn gray in old age, and their fur turns from black to gray. It is also interesting that in the zoo in Leipzig there is a bear without hair, more precisely, it is a bear named Dolores, as scientists believe, she lost her hair due to some rare genetic disease. But something like this in the bear kingdom is truly an exceptional phenomenon.

Does a bear have a tail?

Yes, there is, but only in pandas is it visually noticeable. The rest of the bears have a tail so small that it is practically invisible, hiding in thick fur.

How long do bears live?

How many years do bears live? Average duration The lifespan of clubfooted predators is 45 years.

Where does the bear live?

The habitat of bears is very wide and includes all of Eurasia, North and South America, the Arctic and northwestern Africa. Bears live exclusively in forests.

What does a bear eat?

Bears are omnivores who love to feast on various forest game (hares, roe deer, moose, all can become prey for a bear) and juicy berries and fruits. They will not refuse fish either; by the way, some bears are excellent fishermen, skillfully catching fish in rivers and lakes. Just like a real sweet tooth, bears love honey, which sometimes makes the forest animals very nervous (the favorite children's cartoon about Winnie the Pooh and his trip for honey has a very real basis).

But also the diet of a bear depends on its species, for example, a good-natured panda is a vegetarian bear, as it eats only bamboo shoots, a Himalayan bear happily eats frogs, insects and shellfish, but a polar bear is a true predator that feeds exclusively on meat, plant foods you can't lure him.

Lifestyle of bears

All types of bears except the white lead sedentary image life. They try to live either alone or in small families (a mother bear with cubs). Each bear has its own territory in the forest, where it lives and hunts. In winter, bears go into hibernation, which is one of the characteristic features these animals.

Bear hibernation

A bear's winter hibernation can last up to 200 days. In preparation for it, bears actively stock up on fat in the fall, and this is critically important for the bear. Those bears that have not managed to gain sufficient fat reserves cannot hibernate and, as a result, turn into connecting rod bears (they also become connecting rods due to the bear awakening too early after hibernation). Connecting bears are very dangerous animals (including for humans), attacking everything they come across in the forest. Usually connecting rod bears die from hunger, cold, or a hunter's bullet.

As for the state of ordinary bears hibernating in their secluded den, what is happening to them is somewhat reminiscent of suspended animation - the clubfoot’s pulse during hibernation decreases from the usual 55 beats per minute to 9 beats per minute. The level of metabolism (metabolism) in the bear's body decreases by 53%. At this time, bears, of course, do not eat, drink, or defecate; all their life processes seem to be paused. The exact mechanism of how bears actually hibernate is still a subject of research to this day. scientific research scientists zoologists.

Enemies of the bear

In natural conditions, the bear has no enemies; even packs of wolves prefer to avoid the clubfooted giant. But like many other animals, man became the main enemy of bears; it was destructive poaching and hunting that led to the fact that now many species of bears are on the verge of extinction and are listed in.

Types of bears, photos and names

In the bear family, zoologists have identified 8 main species of bears, which in turn are divided into many subspecies, and we will dwell on them below.

He is also known as the common bear, is the most typical representative of this type. It has thick brown fur, which is why it got the name brown. Lives across a wide geographical area, in the forests of Eurasia, North America, on the territory of our country, brown bears are found in the Carpathian forests, although in our time it is very rare to see them (but for unlucky tourists this is for the better). There are many brown bears in Siberian taiga, forests of Scandinavia, Canada and some northern states USA (for example, in Montana).

Polar bear

He's the same polar bear– is the most big bear in the world, the body length of a polar bear is 3 meters, with a mass of just over 1 ton. These bears are perfectly adapted for life in the northern Arctic latitudes, from their white fur, with which they can be invisible in the snow, to the special structure of their paws, which have membranes for ease of swimming (polar bears swim a lot between ice floes). Just as we wrote above, it is polar bears that are one hundred percent predators, although, strangely enough, the disposition of polar bears is more good-natured than that of their brown relatives. Polar bears live in the polar regions of the northern hemisphere. And by the way, on our website there is a separate article about it, follow the link.

He's a black bear. In many ways it is similar to a brown bear, but differs from it in its smaller size and characteristic black coat color. The length of a black bear does not exceed 2 meters. Baribals live in North America: from the vastness of Alaska to hot Mexico.

He is also the biruang, is the smallest bear in the world, well, how small, the biruang still reaches 1.5 meters in length. It differs from other bears in its disproportionately large paws with huge claws. The body of the Malayan bear is covered with black and brown fur, and its chest is decorated with a white and red spot. The Malayan bear lives in southern China, Thailand and Indonesia.

He's a white-breasted bear. It is far from the largest representative of the bear family; its size is half that of a brown bear - its body length is 1.5-1.7 m. It also has a white or yellowish spot on its chest. The Himalayan bear lives in the mountainous regions of the Himalayas, in Afghanistan, Tibet, Korea, Vietnam, and China.

Named so due to its unusual coloring on the face, which has white and yellow rings. It is of medium size - the body length of the spectacled bear is 1.5-1.8 m. It lives in South America, in countries such as Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Panama.

This bear has an elongated muzzle and is of medium size (body length is up to 1.8 m). The sponge's fur is black or brown, and closer to the head it forms something like a shaggy mane. He also has a light spot on his chest. These bears live in India, some areas of Pakistan, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Nepal.

He's the same bamboo bear. The panda is the friendliest and most peaceful among the bears, as evidenced even by their diet; pandas feed exclusively on plant foods, mainly bamboo shoots. Characteristic appearance Pandas' white head, body, and black paws distinguish them from other types of bears. Pandas live in the mountainous regions of China and Tibet.

Bear breeding

Despite the fact that bears are monogamous animals, their pairings are usually short-lived and break up after a couple of years. The mating season for bears can occur at different times (depending on the species), but what is interesting is that mother bears always give birth to their cubs in the winter, right during hibernation and leave the den with cubs. The pregnancy of a female bear, depending on the species, lasts from 180 to 250 days. From 1 to 4 cubs are usually born at a time.

Little bear cubs are born without fur, without teeth and with closed eyes. At first, they are completely dependent on their mother, feeding on her milk, then they begin to quickly gain weight and grow hair until they turn into full-fledged adult bears.

In our time the only place where you can observe bears with your own eyes are zoos, where they are kept in large spacious enclosures designed to recreate as much as possible natural conditions. In addition to trees and stones, the enclosure must have a small pool in which the bears will swim from time to time. The bear's food should also depend on the season and include those products that are available to the predator in natural conditions.

• A newborn bear cub weighs 400-500 grams, but by the time it reaches adulthood, this “baby” gains 1000 times its weight.
• Bear hunting was a favorite pastime of the medieval nobility, although it was also a very dangerous activity, because even after receiving a point-blank shot from modern machine gun Kalashnikov, the bear, however, can kill the hunter. In the Middle Ages, a spear was often used against bears - a long and heavy spear that made it possible to keep a clubfoot at a safe distance from the hunter.
• Bears, despite their wild nature, can be trained, as evidenced by modern performances of bears in circuses and medieval performances of the so-called “learned bears.”

Bear, video

And finally interesting documentary about brown bears.

The brown bear is one of the largest and most dangerous land predators living in our country, capable of delivering a fatal blow to an enemy, rival or such large prey as elk or deer with its front paw. The brown bear is listed in the IUCN Red List with the status of “endangered species” “However, its abundance varies greatly from population to population. According to rough estimates, there are now about 200,000 brown bears in the world. Of these, the majority live in Russia - 120,000.

But today’s story is not about the bear itself, but about its paws...

The bear's front paws, armed with powerful claws, are a universal tool with which the animal digs a den, digs up the holes of marmots and gophers, turns over stones that are too heavy for humans to lift, breaks trees, and catches fish.


The claws are excellent lugs. Thanks to them, bears easily move along steep slopes where it is difficult for a person to stay on. How many times have I watched with envy how bears easily walk on the steep snowfields from which I slipped. Thanks to their claws, bear cubs climb trees at a speed much faster than electricians climb poles.


On the front paws, the claws can be more than 10 cm long


On the back - twice as long


Bears are not cats; they cannot retract their claws. But they master them masterfully. I have seen more than once how, with the help of their claws, bears carefully, like a sharp fish knife, opened the belly of salmon to get the eggs.


The size of the animal can only be judged approximately by the size of the tracks. In lonchaks (previous year's bear cubs), the width of the front foot print is approximately 10 cm, in adult female bears - 14 - 18 cm. In males, judging by the literature, the width of the paw print can reach 25 cm, but usually 17 - 20 cm. Personally, I have never I have not seen a print wider than 22 cm.

And yet - it’s difficult, but it must be voiced. Bear paws are an expensive oriental delicacy. Every year, hundreds of paws are stopped on the border with China. How long it takes is unknown.


In case anyone hasn't seen bear tracks - here they are. This is the print of the animal's front paw on dried mud.


Traces on a durable spring crust that can easily withstand the considerable weight of the animal


Hind paw print on volcanic sand


On volcanic clay in the Valley of Geysers


The beast walked along a steep and damp slope, pressing its claws into the clay with force. The colors of volcanic clay are like an artist's palette...


Two bears walked along the bottom of a recently dried puddle


Front paw print on wet ground


© Igor Shpilenok