Description:
IP Factly presents… “101 Facts… BEARS!”
Amazing facts, photos and video links to some of the world’s most lovable animals.
Bear books for children – a fun and fascinating way for young readers to find out more about these highly intelligent creatures.
This bear book for kids mixes facts, photos and even includes a video clip section.
IP Factly’s 101 Facts series has been designed to encourage and bolster independent reading.
Accompanying webpage with video clips
This book provides fact after fact for information hungry children to tell family and friends, and even has an accompanying webpage with video clips of the bear species in the book.
The videos are split into bear species to further encourage independent reading and learning.
It makes learning fun and gives a real reason for children to want to read by themselves. Kids will love discovering animal facts to share and enjoy.
The video links mean children come back again and again, naturally developing their reading and learning skills (early kindle models don’t support video but the safe website link is given).
Fascinating Facts Include…
The giant short-faced bear existed up until 11,000 years ago. It is believed to be the largest carnivorous mammal to have ever lived.
A bear’s sense of smell is seven times better than a bloodhound’s!
In spite of being classified as carnivores, about 75% to 85% of a bear’s diet is made up of plants.
Bears do eat honey, although they do not like it as much as Winnie the Pooh does. In fact, they prefer to eat the baby bees when they do stumble upon a beehive.
Contrary to popular belief, bears are not nocturnal. In fact, most of them are active during the day.
Bears tend to walk in their own tracks. This means that an area frequented by bears may have only one set of tracks, but the paw prints will appear sunken as if they have been beaten into the soil.
Scroll up and Buy this book now – your child will love going back to it again and again.
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A Bear History
Giant panda in Ocean Park, Hongkong
Bears belong to the family Ursidae (say: er-sih-day). Only eight species of bears remain alive today.
Bear’s closest living relatives are dogs, seals and mustelids. Mustelids are animals such as weasels, badgers, otters and skunks.
Like dogs, seals and weasels, bears evolved from the miacids – small, insect-eating animals with long tails and long bodies. They lived 60 to 30 million years ago, during the time of the dinosaurs.
Red pandas were once believed to be part of the bear family but they have been reclassified as members of their own family (Ailuridae). They are now viewed as more closely related to the mustelid or weasel family than the bear family.
Red panda at the Cincinnati Zoo
The first bears were small and looked more like raccoons. The earliest known had skulls that were only 2.75 inches (7 centimeters) long. They first appeared 38 to 18 million years ago.
The genus Ursavus is considered the ancestor of all living bears. It existed in North America, Europe and Asia roughly 28 to as recent as 5 million years ago.
The ‘dawn bear’, is believed to be the earliest bear species, it was only about the size of a fox terrier.
About 19 million years ago, the Protursus evolved. This is the ancestor of all pandas, although only one – the giant panda – remains.
The sloth bear is believed to have appeared 5.3 million years ago. The fact that it is different from other bears in terms of appearance and diet is the result of an adaptation to a radiation event, although scientists are unclear what actually happened.
Sloth bear
The Etruscan bear (Ursus etruscus) lived from 5 million to roughly 11,000 years ago. It lived in Europe, Asia and North Africa and weighed about 220 to 440 pounds (100 to 200 kilograms).
The cave bear (Ursus spelaeus) also lived at the same time. It weighed about 880 1100 pounds (400 to 500 kilograms), closer to the weight of today’s bears, and lived mostly in caves, even when not hibernating.
Reconstruction of European cave bear
Another extinct bear species is the dwarf panda which lived up to 2 million years ago. It was only about 3 feet (1 meter) long but is believed to be the direct ancestor of the giant panda.
The giant short-faced bear existed up until 11,000 years ago. It was the largest bear to have ever existed, standing 6.5 feet (2 meters) tall at the shoulder on all fours. It is also believed to be the largest carnivorous mammal to have ever lived.
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