They are a species of the brown bear, otherwise known as grizzly's.. They will eat almost anything that comes there way which includes large mammals, so I would imagine they could be pretty aggressive. They do differ from polar bears in that they are not renowned for actively hunting humans..
Am I right in thinking that kodiak bears are from Russia? I love the wildlife/nature programmes & I'm sure I've seen that somewhere.
I think that the name comes from a Canadian island called Kodiak, but I would have to look it up to be certain..
Brown bear is the family, grizzly and kodiak are sub-species, so a Kodiak is not a Grizzly. From the program I watched a few weeks ago on tele, they're one of the least aggressive animals going. There was a bloke stroking one! I know which bear out of the two I'd rather come across in the wild.
Not so fun fact: If a grizzly bear attacks you, play dead. Grizzlies don't really hunt humans so it is more than likely afraid of you and protecting her cubs. If a black bear attacks you, fight back. They can send their cubs up trees so don't often attack in self defence, if they go for you it's predatory so play dead and it will start eating you!
The Kodiak bear (Ursus arctos middendorffi), also known as the Kodiak brown bear or the Alaskan grizzly bear, inhabits the islands of the Kodiak. I knew I had heard it referred to as a species of grizzly..
As both you and I have mentioned in this thread, the brown bear species is not renowned for actively hunting humans, unlike polar bears of course. The Kodiak species also inhabit an area that has a pretty sparse human population which would also be a factor..
True. In fact most of the humans they are likely to come across will be actively hunting them. Wikipedia reckons there is an injury approximately every other year from Kodiak bears, deaths almost never.
There's no 'species of grizzly' it's just a name given to the bear. The Grizzly official name is the North American Brown Bear, just like the Kodiak is official name, not 'Alaskan Grizzly'. Brown bear is the species, the two are related but their behaviours are incredibly different from one another, the 'Grizzly' is a territorial bear by all accounts. Saying the Kodiak is a Grizzly is like saying an Orca 'Killer Whale' is just a bigger Humpback Dolphin.
As you stated, the grizzly is just another name for the North American Brown Bear, of which the the Kodiak is the largest type. They are of the same species, but the wonders of evolution have deemed that those isolated on this island have evolved to be larger..
