Today’s Friday Flashback is from 6th February 2015 and is entitled ‘A Grizzly Anatomy Lesson’. A little ‘too personal’ for the bear perhaps, but I’m often asked how can I identify wildlife so quickly, so thought this little reminder might be interesting.
Original Text: “Here is a shot of a young two year old female grizzly that I photographed out and about with her mum & sibling a while back. Now how do I know it’s a female just from the one shot? When you’re out in the field it is often hard to identify a male from a female grizzly, especially cubs & sub-adults. Other than the obvious, one way is observing which way they urinate, which of course they don’t do all the time and another, often achieved after the fact in a shot like this, is clearly shown here. On this young bear, if you look immediately below the tail you will see a much smaller and lighter, but clearly defined clump of hair looking like another miniature tail, (you might want to enlarge the image for this one!) Well, that’s it – only females have this, the males do not.“
