this "albino brown bear" (sometimes described as an "albino grizzly bear," depending on the source) was airlifted to the Arctic time and time again after being mistaken for a polar bear.

“The formation and maintenance of species can be a messy process,” says Charlotte Lindqvist, associate professor of biological sciences, College of Arts and Sciences, and an expert on bear genetics.

Coastal brown bears, of which there are several subspecies, including Kodiak bears, can weigh nearly as much as polar bears. A polar bear’s skull and nose are also longer than a grizzly’s.

However, the brown bear genomes had multiple alleles. This suggests that these genes had already been selected for in some ancient polar bear ancestor, and polar bears had adaptations for Arctic ...

Brown bears have one layer of fur ... The research team concludes that the gene differences associated with polar bear adaptions may have been influenced by bears living during the end stages ...

I was beginning to despair of getting within bow range of a brown bear, and after what had happened with the polar bear on the ice off Point Barrow, I didn’t relish going home from this hunt without a ...