Brown Bear Cub Reaching Up to Mother, Katmai
Katmai National Park and Preserve
A brown bear cub reaches up to its mother in an open meadow, both animals briefly upright in a moment of play or contact. Cubs this age spend a lot of their time testing physical limits with their mother and each other; the play-fighting they do now is how they learn the body control and timing they will need as adult bears. The coastal meadows of Katmai are one of the rare places in the world where you can watch this kind of behavior up close without it being staged or provisioned. The bears are doing what they would be doing whether the people were there or not. Brown bear sow and cub, Katmai National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Ursus arctos. Photo © copyright by Carl Donohue.