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No one can match the power of the greatest predator south of the Arctic.
They're the largest, strongest, and most aggressive hunters of the forest.
Their only challenge comes from within.
This is the grizzly bear.
Hi, I'm Danielle Dufault, and you're watching Animalogic.
Today, we're travelling into the heart of darkness
in search of one of the world's greatest predators: grizzly bears.
To get here, we needed to drive to the northern tip of Vancouver Island
and take a boat to the mainland,
and the smaller boat to get up the river where grizzlies are known to fish.
The water's a little chilly.
We made it safely to shore.
We've spent all day on a boat coming deep into the river deltas
in the west coast of British Columbia and now I find myself deep in grizzly bear country.
The day is dreadful but there are encouraging signs.
Unfortunately, the signs are very stinky.
We've been following a grizzly trail and we've run into a couple piles of scat,
so that's always a good sign.
We know that he's been around here.
Hopefully we find him.
No other predators thrive here.
They'd just poke the grizzly bear.
Even black bears stay away as they can't compete.
Grizzly bears here can be over 350 kilograms, more than double the largest black bear.
In general, the more north you go, the bigger the grizzlies get.
In Alaska, some males get to be over 600 kilograms
and three metres tall when standing on their hind legs.
In the southern part of their range, like Yellowstone National Park,
they're only about as big as a sumo wrestler.
This area also provides bears with an amazing feeding opportunity: salmon.
This is the time of the year when millions of
salmon are making their last trip upstream to sleep with the fishes.
They'll make cute babies and then die.
There are salmon rushing by me.
Right behind me.
Come on grizzlies.
Come and get it.
After a long boat ride and hike through the rainforest, we finally found the spot.
And there he was.
We were instructed not to startle them.
So we quietly settled down to watch him eat.
Kind of like what my cat does to me every meal.
To hunt, the bears wade out into the river and wait for the salmon to come to them.
With so many salmon spawning it's like an all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet.
Further up the river, we came across a mother teaching her cubs to fish.
In the late fall, bears go into gorge mode, or hyperphagia.
Winter is coming and food soon will become scarce.
To survive the lean months they go into hibernation,
but before they take their six-month nap they need to get as fat as possible.
This is why northern grizzlies are larger.
They need more fat reserves to survive longer winters.
After she's done building her winter body, she'll find a north-facing hill and dig a burrow.
The process takes a few days, in which she can move up to a ton of dirt.
She then pads the inside of the den with plant matter for insulation.
The fish were not as abundant as they were earlier in the season,
but they provided a nutritious dessert.
This might be the last thing this bear eats this year.
We'll let her be for now.
Yeah, looks like we made it back out unscathed, unmauled.
Our little Zodiac boat is right around the corner.
When fat is burned it creates urea, which can be fatal in high doses.
Bears deal with that problem by breaking down the urea and using the nitrogen to build protein.
In some cases the bear can gain muscle mass just by laying there.
Is the "bear diet" a Hollywood fad yet?
Speaking of diets, I was a little surprised to see so much plant matter in their poo.
It turns out the majority of a grizzly bear's diet
consists of berries, tubers, nuts, and other plant matter.
Sometimes it's more energy-efficient to eat plants than to chase prey.
Of course, they're great predators and are known to be able to eat
pretty much any animal in their range, including wolves and black bears.
But they prefer to take it easy and mostly go for young or sick ungulates.
And insects, and small mammals are delicious appetizers.
Carrion is another source of protein.
They have one of the most sensitive noses in the animal kingdom,
20 times stronger than a Bloodhound, and it helps them find prey over a kilometre away.
Roadkill is an easy but dangerous snack.
And they can also steal prey from other predators, such as wolves and cougars.
These coastal areas support the majority of the grizzly population.
About half of North America's 60,000 grizzlies live in Alaska, a quarter
live in British Columbia, and the rest mostly in the Canadian northern territories and Alberta.
Only about 1500 bears live in the contiguous US.
There used to be grizzlies all the way down to Mexico.
California still has them in their flag, even though the last sighting there was in the 1930s.
As Europeans started moving into these areas
they brought cattle with them, which proved to be an easy target for bears .
Settlers quickly started hunting bears and in just 30 years
they were reduced to their current range, mostly far away from human populations.
Having seen the grizzlies of B.C, we wanted to see the small population of grizzlies in the Rockies.
After a 10-hour drive through forests, ice fields, and mountains we made it to Alberta,
home to a small but stable population of grizzly bears.
Black bears also live here so it's important to know how to tell them apart.
Black bears can be brown and grizzlies can be black, so you have to pay attention to their rump.
In black bears, their rump is higher than their shoulders, while in grizzlies it's the opposite.
Grizzlies also have a muscular hump that black bears lack.
And lastly, black bears have a straight snout, whereas grizzlies it's more curved.
On our way to Alberta we briefly stopped at B.C Wildlife Park, a conservation institution
that rehabs wildlife and cares for animals that can't be released back into the wild.
We got to see two massive grizzlies.
They were beautiful and goofy, but at the same time you could see from up close
how strong and intimidating they could be.
Everything about them is big.
These lovely grizzlies behind me are giving me a great display of just how agile their tongues are.
They use these for all kinds of food manipulation.
His sister over here, the lighter one right there.
She's like, "Come on bro, come on, you're embarrassing me."
The long tongues are particularly useful to extract insects from bark.
You don't really think of grizzlies as moth eaters,
but you know what they say, it's the food of the future.
Gotta say, I'm a little jealous of the grizzly lifestyle.
Packing on as many pounds as you can during the winter
and then emerging in the summer just looking all smelled and perfect.
It's amazing.
Our next destination was Jasper National Park,
and having met them up close here just made us more determined to see them in the mountains.
Just as the coastal grizzlies, these bears are preparing to hibernate and are at their heaviest.
After a few days of searching, we got to see them.
These are two of just 100 bears in the park.
We were very lucky to have seen them.
Females go into hibernation pregnant and give birth in the den.
The cubs will feed on the milk exclusively until spring,
so the mom needs to gain extra weight to produce enough food for her babies.
Down by the river there were two young bears.
They seem to be having a good time running around and playing.
You know, normal young bear stuff.
They start play fighting, but one of them goes a little too far.
The other one retaliates.
Even at a young age their claws can be as long as your fingers.
Over 50% of grizzlies don't survive their first year.
The most common cause of death is other grizzly bears.
This could be a Cain and Abel situation.
Luckily, the mom shows up to break up the fight.
The sight of her two young cubs killing each other would have been unbearable.
And so, after several weeks of travel,
we can finally scratch seeing a wild grizzly bear in Jasper off our bucket list.
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