This September, a Michigan trail camera discovered a white-colored black bear, which resulted in one of the season’s most uncommon images. The rare “spirit bear” was then looking through a hunter’s bags and some bait.
The bear was observed rummaging through some bait that had been laid by a hunter, according to a post shared by a Facebook group for Upper Peninsula trekking guides.
The bear was observed rummaging through some bait that had been laid by a hunter, according to a post shared by a Facebook group for Upper Peninsula trekking guides.
Cody Norton, a large carnivore specialist from the DNR, thought it was just too cool and thrilling to be able to see an animal of this rarity appear in this place rather than another. On some of the trail cameras the team uses for surveys, they have seen cinnamon color phases as well as blonde and chocolate ones, which is also really cool to see.
White is White.
According to Norton, bear populations are more likely to include black bears with light to dark coloring, but white is the unique trait of the species.
Noting Norton’s best estimation, the bear is only about two years old.
Bears are most prevalent in Michigan, the western Upper Peninsula, where the bear was first discovered. It is the only aspect of the sighting that is universal.
Polar bears or albinos are not black bears with white fur. Instead, according to Norton, they are the outcome of a one-in-a-million chance in which both male and female breeding parents carried a recessive gene for white fur, New York Post reports.
Kermode Bears / Spirit Bears
Black bears with white fur are almost always born in the wild in western Canada, where they are a subspecies of the American black bear. They are known as Kermode bears, and they live on some islands in the province. White fur is found in 10-20% of the population.
Some call the rare white bear, spirit bears.
Rare black bears called “spirit bears” have white or creamy fur, dark nose pads, brown eyes, and claws that are almost completely white. They are not albinos or polar bears. There may be 100.
Princess Royal and Gribbell Islands off the coast of British Columbia’s rainforest are home to the majority of Spirit Bears. They are thought to be a black bear subspecies known as Kermode bears (Ursus americanus kermodeii). On those islands, only about 20% of the bears are white; the majority are black. With increasing distance from those islands on the mainland, the percentage of white bears dramatically decreases.
Grass, forbs, bulbs, berries, nuts, fruits, insects, small mammals, moose calves, deer fawns, carrion, and salmon when spawning from late summer onward are all common food sources for Kermode bears.
Near Cedar Lake, Manitoba, about 300 miles northwest of Beausejour, a black mother, and a white cub were found in 2004. This white cub, Maskwa, had a fresh mutation in the gene that determines the coat color of Kermode bears.
