Tibetan blue bears, begging for food

the one on the left is penting his fingers and saying excellent.....

November 2013

they are very distinctive indeed. The subspecies is Ursus arctos pruinosus, which i gather is endemic to the Tibetan plateau.

Although Ursus arctos is almost certainly oversplit in terms of subspecies, I rather suspect that this is one of the valid taxa - my gut feeling is that this, the Himalayan Brown Bear (Ursus arctos isabellinus) and the Syrian Brown Bear (Ursus arctos syriacus) represent a cline of related forms, with the Syrian subspecies having interbred to some degree with the Eurasian nominate subspecies.

I saw one at Beijing (or at least one which i believed to be this subspecies -- it had no signage)

If you refer to the following animal, I would be inclined to identify it as Himalayan Brown Bear (Ursus arctos isabellinus)



For comparison, here is a photograph which alexkant took of Himalayan Brown Bear at a zoo in Russia last year.

yes that is the one. I was going by memory (I haven't uploaded my Beijing photos yet) and I just remembered the shaggy ears. It obviously isn't a Tibetan blue bear! To be honest the Chinese zoos are blurring together a bit. I can't remember the Shanghai bears at all!!

EDIT: I just realised that was my photo from Shanghai Zoo! I really am a bit down in the brain department lately.....

Along with my above theory about the Tibetan, Himalayan and Syrian Brown Bears all forming a natural subspecies cline, another thing I have idly wondered in the past is whether the Tibetan Blue Bear population might include natural arctos x thibetanus hybrids in their genetic heritage going way back. Your photographs, looking as they do much like someone has grafted the face of a Brown Bear onto the body of an Asiatic Black, are rather intriguing in this regard.