Canada: Why bears are feeling more at home near people

Take a look at why bears are feeling more at home near people in Canada.

CBC News: The National on Youtube has the story.

CBC/Radio-Canada is a Canadian public broadcast service.

Hundreds of black bears have been destroyed in B.C. this year after wandering into populated areas in search of food. CBC’

Bears are looking for food to eat every day. They are certainly dangerous animals.

Fatal bear attacks in North America have occurred in a variety of different settings. There have been several in wilderness habitats of bears involving hikers, hunters, and campers. Brown bear (Ursus arctos, a subspecies of which is known as the grizzly bear, Ursus arctos horribilis) incidents have occurred in its native range spanning Alaska, Northern Canada, and Western Canada, and portions of the Rocky Mountains in the United States. The locations of black bear wilderness fatal attacks reflect its wider range.

Bears held captive by animal trainers, in zoos or carnivals, or kept as pets, have been responsible for several attacks. There have also been really unusual cases in which a person entered a bear's cage and was then mauled.

Bear attacks are rare in North America. These attacks are for predatory, territorial, or protective reasons. Most wilderness attacks have occurred when there were only one or two people in the vicinity.

The three most frequent species of bear attacks are: the brown bear, the black bear (Ursus americanus), and the polar bear (Ursus maritimus).

Alaska: "Like a hurricane": Moose fight destroys women's yard

"Like a hurricane": Moose fight destroys women's yard

CTV News on Youtube has the story.

Two moose wrought havoc at a home in Homer, Alaska, getting into a bloody fight that caused significant damage to a woman’s yard and car.

The so-called animal: "moose" or "elk" is the only species in the genus Alces. The moose is the tallest and second-largest land mammal in North America, only falling short of the American buffalo in terms of mass. It is the largest and heaviest extant species of deer. Most adult male moose have distinctive broad, palmate ("open-hand shaped") antlers; most other members of the deer family have antlers with a dendritic ("twig-like") configuration. Moose typically inhabit boreal forests and temperate broadleaf and mixed forests of the Northern Hemisphere in temperate to subarctic climates. Hunting and other human activities have caused a reduction in the size of the moose's range over time. It has been reintroduced to some of its former habitats. Currently, most moose occur in Canada, Alaska, New England (with Maine having the most of the contiguous United States), New York State, Fennoscandia, the Baltic states, Poland, Kazakhstan, and Russia.

The moose food diet consists of both terrestrial and aquatic vegetation. Predators of moose include wolves, bears, humans, wolverines (rarely), and (while swimming in the ocean) orcas. Unlike most other deer species, moose do not form herds and are solitary animals, aside from calves who remain with their mother until the cow begins estrus (typically at 18 months after birth of the calf), at which point the cow chases them away. Although generally slow-moving and sedentary, moose can become aggressive, and move quickly if angered or startled. Their mating season in the autumn indeed features energetic fights between males competing for a female.

What are extant animals:

Extant describes species that DO exist. Virtually every creature you hear about on Something Wild is extant. Extinct and extant are opposites, leaving extirpation somewhere in the middle. Biologists use extirpated to describe species that no longer exist in a specific region.