American Black Bear

About the American black bear

The American black bear is a medium-sized bear endemic to North America, and it's the continent's smallest and most widely distributed bear species. It's an omnivore whose diet shifts substantially with the season and its location, and while it primarily lives in forested regions, it will venture beyond forest edges in search of food — including, at times, into human settlements where food is easy to find. The IUCN lists it as Least Concern, thanks to its wide distribution and a population estimated to be twice that of all other bear species combined; along with the brown bear, it's one of only two modern bear species not considered globally threatened.

Despite living alongside brown bears and polar bears in North America, the American black bear isn't closely related to either — genetic studies show the lineages split from a common ancestor roughly 5.05 million years ago. Its closest living relative is the Asian black bear. The skull is broad, with a narrow muzzle and large jaw hinges; in Virginia, adult skull length averaged 26.2 to 31.7 cm (10.3–12.5 in), with the longest reported skulls reaching 35 cm (13.8 in) across the species' range. Claws are short, curved, and thickest at the base, typically black or grayish-brown, and the soles of the feet are naked, leathery, and deeply wrinkled. Ears are small, rounded, and set well back on the head, and the tail is relatively short, at 7.7–17.7 cm (3.0–7.0 in).

Black bears are notably dexterous — capable of opening screw-cap containers and working door latches — and strong enough that a 120 lb (54 kg) bear has been observed flipping rocks weighing 310 to 325 lb (141–147 kg) with a single foreleg. They can run at 25–30 mph (40–48 km/h). Their eyesight is good enough that they've been shown, in tests, to learn visual color-discrimination tasks faster than chimpanzees and about as fast as domestic dogs, and they can also quickly learn to tell apart different shapes.

Behavior and diet

Weight in American black bears varies substantially by age, sex, health, and season — pre-den weight in autumn tends to run about 30% higher than weight in spring, right after bears emerge from their dens. Geography matters too: bears on the East Coast of the U.S. tend to be heavier on average than those on the West Coast, generally following Bergmann's rule, in which body size increases in colder environments. Regional averages illustrate the range: adult males averaged 86 kg (190 lb) in California and 138 kg (304 lb) near urban areas of Nevada's Lake Tahoe region, while in New York, males averaged 136 kg (300 lb) and females 72.6 kg (160 lb). In Great Smoky Mountains National Park, males averaged 112 kg (247 lb) and females 47 kg (104 lb).

The species' generalist, omnivorous habits are considered a major reason it alone, among several large Ice Age North American carnivores, survived into the modern era while more specialized predators like the giant short-faced bear went extinct. American black bears are reproductively compatible with several other bear species and occasionally produce hybrids; in one documented case, the London Zoo bred an American black bear with a Eurasian brown bear in 1859, though the resulting cubs did not survive to maturity.

Range and habitat

Historically, American black bears occupied most of North America's forested regions. Today they're primarily limited to more sparsely settled forested areas, though populations have expanded in recent decades into places like Ohio, Illinois, southern Indiana, and western Nebraska — and in 2019, biologists confirmed a year-round resident bear in northeastern Iowa for the first time since the 1880s. In the U.S., the current range runs fairly continuously through the Northeast and the Appalachian Mountains from Maine to northern Georgia, as well as through the northern Midwest, the Rocky Mountains, the West Coast, and Alaska, though the range becomes fragmented elsewhere. California has the largest black bear population of any of the 48 contiguous states, with an estimated 25,000–35,000 bears in 2017 growing to about 60,000 by 2026. Western North Carolina's population grew from about 3,000 in the early 2000s to more than 8,000 in the 2020s, and Great Smoky Mountains National Park held roughly 1,500 bears in 2020, at a density of about two per square mile. In Mexico, the species is classified as endangered.

Habitat preferences share a few features across the range: relatively inaccessible terrain, thick understory vegetation, and abundant mast crops. In most of the contiguous U.S., black bears are usually found in heavily vegetated mountainous country from 400 to 3,000 m (1,300–9,800 ft) in elevation. In the Southwest and Mexico, that typically means chaparral and pinyon-juniper woodlands; in the southern Appalachians, oak-hickory and mixed mesophytic forests; and along the coastal Southeast, a mix of flatwoods, bays, and swampy hardwood sites. In the Northeast, prime habitat includes hardwood-conifer forest canopy along with corn crops, oak-hickory mast, and swampy refuge cover in white cedar stands, while the Rockies are dominated by spruce-fir forest with important non-forested habitat in wet meadows and riparian areas.

Conservation status

The American black bear is listed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List, based on a 2016 assessment, owing to its broad distribution and a population estimated at twice that of all other bear species combined. Along with the brown bear, it is one of only two living bear species not considered globally threatened with extinction.

Surveys from the early 1990s found populations either stable or increasing across 35 states, with exceptions in Idaho and New Mexico, and the U.S. population, excluding Alaska, Idaho, South Dakota, Texas, and Wyoming, was estimated at 339,000 to 465,000 in 2011. In Canada, the mid-1990s population across seven surveyed provinces was estimated at 396,000 to 476,000, with populations reported stable through the 2000s; the species has, however, been extirpated from Prince Edward Island since 1937.

The picture is very different at the southern edge of the range. Mexico is the only country where the American black bear is classified as endangered, and knowledge of populations outside four known areas identified as of 1993 hasn't been updated since 1959.