Today’s Friday Flashback is from 13th November 2017 and is entitled ‘Spirit With A Bloody Nose’. Probably my last ‘flashback’ for a while, so I thought I’d finish this year’s series off with an old time favourite of many – the spirit bear.
Original Text: “Here’s a shot I took a few years back of a spirit bear chasing salmon in a river system in the Great Bear Rainforest, here on the BC coast. The bear had clearly had some success as can be seen by the blood of a previous catch all over his nose. On this occasion however the salmon can be seen splashing beneath the bear as it makes it’s escape. Many people ask me why has it got an orange tint through it’s coat. I have never studied this myself, but I have been told by a geneticist that it is caused by the oils in the salmon that the bears enjoy so much. I have seen spirit bears early in the salmon season and the orange colour was not so very strong, but a month to six weeks later and it has been really prominent in the coat of the same bear.”
