Is there a half polar bear-half grizzly bear wandering around Katmai National Park in Alaska? One light-colored cub has everyone talking… but wildlife officials aren’t so sure that’s the explanation.
Katmai National Park is home to an estimated 2,200 bears. The sprawling area in Alaska is also home to the famous “Fat Bear Week,” which runs each year from late September to early October. I know Christmas and March Madness are often considered the “most wonderful time of the year,” but “Fat Bear Week” – which is put on by Preserve Explore.org and the Katmai Conservancy – has to be up there.
And thanks to Explore.org, which has wildlife cameras set up all over Katmai, a lot of people are talking about a silvery-white colored cub that has popped up in the park. It’s so white in color that many online that frequent the cameras started asking if it could be a “pizzly” – a cross between a grizzly bear and a polar bear.
Yes, those do exist, and are also sometimes referred to as “grolar bears.”
Gordon Clagget, a spokesperson for the National Park Service Alaska office, says that it seems very unlikely for this cub to be the result of polar bear and grizzly bear cross-breeding. Plus, it’s known that this cub’s mother is a brown bear:
“The coloring is likely due to the bear’s genetics. There are many bears on the Brooks River, both male and female, with very blonde fur. This fur can get darker as the bear ages; we won’t know for sure until the bear is fully grown.”
Another reason why that cute, white-colored bear isn’t a “grolar?” Katmai National Park is actually located too far south in Alaska for polar bears (at least in their currently observed range), so it’s highly unlikely that this cub is a “pizzly,” as fun as it might be to speculate about.
Mike Fitz, a naturalist with the livestream service Explore.org, believes that this cub isn’t even a bear that could be leucistic or albino. He believes it’s just a cub that came out very blond, and whose fur will likely darken as it gets older:
“To my eyes, the cub does not show signs of leucism or albinism either. I think the cub’s fur falls within the natural variation of fur color for brown bears in Katmai, just on the very blond end of that spectrum. Every few years at Brooks River, a young cub will arrive with similarly colored light blond fur.”
So these claims of a “pizzly” bear seem to be much ado about nothing.
Though I will say… the color of the cub does remind me a lot of the rare “spirit bear,” which is the official animal of the B.C. province of Canada. Also called the Kermode, their white fur is caused by a recessive gene that makes their typically brown fur a white or cream color.
In indigenous culture, they believed that their Raven idol had made one of every 10 bears white in remembrance of the Ice Age. Other communities that have been native to the Canada area where spirit bears are most commonly found have always viewed the animal as sacred.
It’s extremely rare to see one in person. That’s due to the estimated population of spirit bears currently living on Earth (more accurate number is probably between 50 and 150). And if a spirit bear were to have a cub that was also pale in color, the other parent of the cub must also carry the gene that would result in a cream-colored or white coat. Even if the mother herself is a spirit bear, there’s no guarantee she’d produce cubs that resemble herself.
I’m gonna go ahead and consider the cub in Katmai that’s currently getting a lot of attention a “spirit bear,” even if it’s only one in spirit (see what I did there?).
