Description
Because of their spirit-like appearance, "spirit bears" hold a prominent place in the oral stories of the Canadian First Nations and American Indians of the area. Scientists have found that black bears are not as effective at catching fish as white bears, as the white bears are less visible from the perspective of the fish. While at night the two colors of bears have similar success rates at catching fish, such as salmon, during the day the white bears are 30% more effective.
The Kermode bear was named after Francis Kermode, former director of the Royal B.C. Museum, who researched the subspecies and a colleague of William Hornaday, the zoologist who described it.
Read more about this topic: Kermode Bear
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“I was here first introduced to Joe.... He was a good-looking Indian, twenty-four years old, apparently of unmixed blood, short and stout, with a broad face and reddish complexion, and eyes, methinks, narrower and more turned up at the outer corners than ours, answering to the description of his race. Besides his underclothing, he wore a red flannel shirt, woolen pants, and a black Kossuth hat, the ordinary dress of the lumberman, and, to a considerable extent, of the Penobscot Indian.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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