Are Black Bears Always Black? Cinnamon, Blue and White Bears

How many colors can a black bear be?

The American black bear has one of the most variable coats of any mammal. Biologists usually group the colors into a few main phases:

• Black, often with a tan or brown muzzle and sometimes a white chest patch.
• Brown and chocolate, from dark brown to medium brown.
• Cinnamon, a reddish or ginger brown.
• Blond, a pale yellowish or straw color.
• Blue-gray, the “glacier bear” of southeast Alaska.
• White or cream, the “spirit bear” or Kermode bear of British Columbia.

Colors can also look different through the year. Brown and cinnamon coats often bleach paler in summer sun, and newly molted fur looks darker. Cubs in the same litter can have different colors, so a black mother may lead a cinnamon cub, or the other way around.

Where are brown and cinnamon black bears found?

The pattern is strongly geographic. In the East, from Maine and Quebec to Georgia and Florida, almost all black bears are black. Brown, cinnamon and blond bears become more common as you move west. In the Rocky Mountains roughly half of all black bears are not black, and in parts of the Southwest and the Great Basin most bears are brown or cinnamon.

Why the difference? One leading idea is that lighter coats absorb less heat in open, sunny, dry country, while black coats are common in shady, humid forests. Some biologists have also suggested that brown coats could help black bears look like grizzlies, which might deter rivals, but this has not been proven.

A 2023 genetic study of 151 black bears found that the cinnamon color is mainly caused by a single change in a pigment gene called TYRP1, which reduces the amount of dark pigment in the hair. The variant appears to have arisen about 9,000–10,000 years ago in the Southwest and then spread north and east, which suggests that light coats gave bears there some advantage.

Glacier bears: the blue-gray black bear

Glacier bears are black bears with silvery blue-gray fur, often paler on the back and darker on the legs. They live mainly in the coastal mountains of southeast Alaska, especially around Glacier Bay and Yakutat, with a few reports from northwestern British Columbia and southwestern Yukon. The Tlingit people have long known them as a bear that seems to vanish against snow and ice.

Glacier bears are sometimes listed as a subspecies, Ursus americanus emmonsii, but their color is the only clear difference. Very little research has been done on them, and scientists still do not know which genes cause the blue-gray coat or how many glacier bears exist.

Spirit bears: the white black bear

The spirit bear, or Kermode bear, is a white or cream-colored black bear from the central and north coast of British Columbia, in the region known as the Great Bear Rainforest. Most bears there are black, but on a few islands, especially Gribbell and Princess Royal, white bears make up roughly 10–20% or more of the population. Estimates suggest about 100–500 white bears exist in total.

Spirit bears are not albinos. They have dark eyes, skin and noses. Their white fur comes from a single change in a pigment gene called MC1R. The variant is recessive, so a cub is white only if it inherits a copy from both parents. Two black parents that each carry one copy can therefore have a white cub.

Research has shown that white bears catch salmon more successfully than black bears in daylight, probably because a white shape is harder for fish to see against a bright sky. In 2006 the spirit bear became British Columbia’s official provincial mammal, and it is a central figure in the traditions of local First Nations, including the Gitga’at and Kitasoo/Xai’xais.

Albino and other unusual black bears

True albino black bears, with pink eyes and no pigment at all, have been recorded but are extremely rare. Bears with patchy white fur, unusually pale faces or a large white chest blaze also turn up now and then. White chest marks are found in some black bears, though less often than in the Asian black bear, which has a bold cream-colored “V”.

Polar bears are a different story. Their fur only looks white, as explained in are polar bears really white?

Color is not a good way to identify a bear

Because so many black bears are brown, people in the West often mistake them for grizzly bears, and a dark grizzly can be mistaken for a black bear. Body shape is far more reliable than color. Grizzlies have a big shoulder hump, a dished face, short rounded ears and long, pale front claws. Black bears have no hump, a straight face profile, taller pointed ears and short, dark, curved claws. Our guide to grizzly bear vs black bear shows the differences side by side.