Polar Bear - Kodiak Bear comparison

[brobear]

This is where us bear enthusiasts become divided. Of all the living bears, which one should be crowned as "King of Bears"? Should it be the grizzly or the polar? 
-WHO- Would Win ... Polar Bear vs Grizzly Bear - by Jerry Pallotta.  Copyright: 2010. 
 
During the Arctic winter, polar bears and grizzly bears live far away from each other. But during the summer months, while looking for food, polar bears and grizzly bears sometimes end up in the same location. What would happen if they met each other? What would happen if they had a fight? Who would win? 

[brobear]

Scientific name of the polar bear - Ursus maritimus.
Meet the polar bear. Polar bears are considered sea mammals. They spend most of their time on the frozen sea. They prefer to live near the edge of the ice pack. They are the largest of all bears.

Fun fact: There are no polar bears in the Antarctic. Remember: Polar bears: North Pole. Penguins: South Pole. There are no penguins in the arctic.

[brobear]

Scientific name of the grizzly bear - Ursus arctos horribilis.
Meet the grizzly bear. Grizzly bears are mammals that live on land. You can tell grizzlies by the huge hump at their shoulders. This is a muscle they use for digging.

Did you know: There are no grizzlies in the southern hemisphere.

[brobear]

Sorry black bear. You are not in this book because you are not as big and ferocious as grizzlies and polar bears.
Fun fact: While on a hunting trip, President Teddy Roosevelt refused to shoot an old bear. Newspapers teased him, and from then on cute stuffed toy bears were called "teddy bears."

*Note: even back then, apparently, the news media was one-sided. 
 
Forget about it, giant panda. You are a plant-eater and are no match for a polar bear or a grizzly.

[brobear]

Ten Feet. Did you know? The polar bear is an apex predator. An apex predator is an animal that has no natural enemies. Polar bears are the largest predatory land animals. Polar bears can grow to be ten feet tall.

Eight Feet. A grizzly bear can stand eight feet tall. They tower over you.

[brobear]

Polar bears are excellent swimmers. They can swim farther than fifty miles at one stretch.
Polar bears mostly eat meat from the ocean - walrus, seals, sea lions, and fish. Seals are their favorite food.

Fun fact: Polar bears do the dog paddle.
Did you know? Yikes! A polar bear can eat a human, but it hardly ever happens. Not many people live near polar bears.

Note: Do polar bears really eat fish and sea lions?

[brobear]

Grizzly bears are good swimmers, but they prefer standing in a river to catch fish. If a grizzly stands in the right spot, a migrating salmon might jump right into its mouth.

Interesting fact: Grizzlies eat salmon, trout, apples, berries, honey, and anything they can on. Grizzlies have also been known to eat moose, elk, caribou, rodents, sheep, grubs, and clams.

Not a fun fact: Each year grizzlies eat a few people.

[brobear]

Open wide! Polar bears have carnivore teeth - canine teeth in front and huge molars in back. Polar bears can smell a seal through ice three feet thick.
Grizzly bears have teeth that are similar to a polar bear's. Grizzlies have such a good sense of smell that they can detect a dead animal ten miles away.

[brobear]

A polar bear can run twenty-five miles per hour. That is faster than a human can run. Polar bears can run down some caribou. Grizzly bears look slow. But don't be fooled. Grizzly bears cab easily outrun a human. They are fast!

Did you know? A grizzly is faster on land. A polar bear is probably faster on ice.

Only an expert osteologist, a bone scientist, can tell their bones apart.

[brobear]

Polar bears are solitary animals. They rarely fight each other.
Grizzly bears are also solitary animals. But groups of grizzlies sometimes fish together during salmon migration.
Male polar bears do not hibernate. They spend all winter looking for food. They might build a snow cave to sleep away an unusually bad storm.
Female polar bears build a "maternity den," usually in the snow and ice, to spend the winter and take care of their cubs. This conserves the mom's energy.
Just before winter, grizzlies eat as much as they can to fatten up for a long sleep. Grizzly bears have a deep winter sleep, but it is not true hibernation. A grizzly can wake up and suddenly attack you. In the springtime, grizzlies are hungry. Watch out!

[brobear]

So who would win if they had a fight? The polar bear or the grizzly bear?
A polar bear steps off the ice onto a beach. A grizzly bear comes out of the woods. They see each other. They can smell each other. Both bears stand to get a better look. Then it happens. The grizzly charges at the polar bear, growling and showing his teeth.
The polar bear crouches down, paws up, ready for battle. Running at full speed, the grizzly knocks over the polar bear. The polar bear gets right up and fights back. Whap! He smacks the grizzly in the face. Ouch! They claw, scratch, and bite. It's a nasty fight.

[brobear]

They wrestle, each trying to get the advantage. Rolling around, both bears get dirty from the sand and mud. The grizzly is relentless - it keeps on fighting!
Suddenly, the polar bear sees no point in fighting anymore. There is no reason to fight to the death. The polar bear runs away.
The grizzly wins. But now he is sore and tired. He hopes he never runs into a polar bear again. These two bears are so similar - next time the outcome could be quite different!

[brobear]

The book is juvenile but mostly holding to facts. I agree with the final assessment. This of course, depending greatly on size. Let's say that the mature male polar bear weighs 1,000 pounds ( 454 kg ) and the mature male summer-weight grizzly weighs 700 pounds ( 318 kg ). The polar bear is the bigger bear but not by as much as one might think. As long as a polar bear is feeding normally, he will always be fatter than the grizzly. Possibly as much as 300 pounds worth.
A grizzly must go on a feeding frenzy to fatten up for his winter's sleep. A female polar bear is simply ready. More than 90 percent of a polar bear's diet is pure blubber. Therefore, the size difference is minimal - if the grizzly is an exceptional bear.
Grizzlies normally fight among themselves more than do polar bears. In fact, male grizzlies probably fight among themselves even more than lions do though not as often to the death. Therefore, the grizzly would normally have more fighting experience than the polar.
My conclusion: Just as with grizzly vs lion or grizzly vs tiger; a big boar grizzly would stand a 50-50 chance of defeating a similar-sized polar bear - and vise versa. They are each the lord and master of his own domain. 
 
                                                          

[brobear]

The record wild polar bear on record weighed 2,210 pounds ( 1,002 kg ).
The largest wild grizzly on record weighed 1,656 pounds ( 751 kg ).

*Note that polar bears in the wild are bigger and heavier than those kept in captivity due to their diet of whale and seal blubber. 
 

Just how big can a Kodiak bear grow to be? I believe that 1500 pounds is probably a normal maximum seldom reached. Bart the Bear and a few other captive Kodiaks have reached this peak. The heaviest recorded wild Kodiak weighed 1656 pounds ( 751 kg ). However, as I would estimate maybe one out of perhaps a thousand male 10+ year old Kodiaks are ever actually weighed, I would not say that this was the biggest ever Kodiak bear living in the wild.
As for captive bears, there was a 15 year old Kodiak in the Cheyenne Mountain Zoological Park that was weighed at 1670 pounds ( 757 kg ). Even bigger were Goliath which was reportedly weighed in 1983 at 2000 pounds and Clyde which was reportedly weighed in 1987 at 2136 pounds.
shaggygod.proboards.com/board/66/kodiak-brown-bear-coastal 
 
*Note:  According to zoo director Terry Lincoln, Clyde probably weighed close to 2400 lbs a year earlier He still had a fat layer of 9 inches when he died.

[brobear]

A grizzly can reach a greater size and weight in captivity than in the wild but a zoo cannot provide a polar bear with anything of greater weight-gain than seals, walrus, and beached whales. No captive polar bears have ever been known to reach the size of Goliath or Clyde. So, what does this mean?
It's all about food availability. Polar bears are larger because of their available prey. During the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth century, captive polar bears were often the size of black bears; from 200 to 400 pounds. In the wild a mature male polar bear averages roughly 1,000 pounds while some exceptional individuals reach upwards to 1,700 pounds!

[brobear]

Size Range in the Wild:
Polar bear from 700 pounds to 1,700 pounds.
Grizzly from 300 pounds to 1,500 pounds.
 
Pictured here is bears shown within their more typical size ranges.
 

[brobear]

www.nwf.org/News-and-Magazines/National-Wildlife/Animals/Archives/2006/Grizzly-Bears-on-Ice.aspx

Aklak vs. Nanook: A Tale of Two Bears
Like most scientists, the Inuit view Aklak, the grizzly bear, and Nanook, the polar bear, as two very different creatures. Their traditional tales of polar bears almost always portray these animals as powerful, keen-witted and worthy of great esteem. The grizzly, on the other hand, is seen as a more sinister beast, one that is likely to charge unexpectedly in an explosive manner.

Some biologists might agree with that assessment, citing evidence that barren ground grizzlies appear to be more aggressive than grizzlies living farther south. One explanation, they say, could be that northern grizzlies evolved in a treeless world where there's no place to hide, so threatening one's opponent may make far more sense than fleeing.

Whatever the reason, bear biologist Andrew Derocher says he is "a lot more comfortable capturing a big polar bear on the sea ice than a small grizzly on land. Grizzlies tend to react much more aggressively. It can be very unnerving."

[brobear]

Kodiak grizzly and polar bear - Holocene mega-fauna. 
 
 

[brobear]

Why do I sincerely believe that the bear is the strongest animal ( terrestrial mammal ) of his size and that the grizzly is pound-for-pound the strongest of bears?
Well, it all boils down to the fact that all bears are strong. What animal of size-parity is as strong? I cannot name a single one.
As for a comparison with other bears, it all come down to the grizzly's shoulder hump. That big lump of extra-muscle that is the reward of roughly a million years of digging in ( sometimes ) concrete-hard ground. I know what the bear-men studying the grizzly mean when they say "concrete-hard ground." I have myself ( on jobs ) experienced concrete-hard earth. This is ground so hard that to dig into it merely with a shovel is impossible. You must first break the ground with a pick-ax. Then, you can only shovel out the big chunks of earth broken off by the pick-ax. Hard work! Often, this ground is riddled with stones and laced with tough roots.
A grizzly has so much power in his arms, neck, and shoulders - his upper-body strength enhanced by that shoulder hump - that he can quickly excavate this hard earth like some heavy-duty construction equipment made of solid steel and gasoline-powered. His long claws are strong and his paws are built to withstand hard impact. That same shoulder hump that reinforces his digging ability also reinforces a powerful paw-strike.

[brobear]

I'm not sure who weighed the 1,656 pound Kodiak bear. But, in the wild, the brown bear cannot compete with the polar bear in a contest of size. Environment and food availability is the key. Put coastal brown bears on a diet of protein-rich blubber and you will have polar-sized grizzlies.
If someone was to draw-up a family tree of Ursus arctos ( I wish someone would ), that family tree would be incomplete without the polar bear. Ursus maritimus is genetically a brown bear, although one of great change due to a drastically different environment and life-style. The mere fact that the polar exists speaks volumes for the adaptability of the grizzly.
In my opinion - such as it is - the grizzly ( Ursus arctos ) is the king of the bears including the polar bear, even though he is classified under a different name - Ursus maritimus. The polar bear is the monarch of the coastal locations at the top of the world while the grizzly rules his domain with few challengers just south of the arctic.