The black bear is the most common and most widespread bear in North America. It lives across much of the continent, from Alaska and Canada through the United States to Mexico, and it mostly lives in forests and other places with trees. As of November 2026, biologists summarizing regional estimates put the total number of black bears in North America at 850,000 to 950,000. As of November 2026, there are more black bears than all other bear species in North America combined. As of November 2026, Alaska has an estimated 100,000 black bears, and biologists estimate roughly 1,900 live in Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

How do we know how many black bears there are? By the 1850s almost 75 percent of Vermont's land was cleared for farmland, and its black bears were at their lowest numbers then. Missouri's black bear population has grown from about 300 to nearly 1,000 since 2011, as of October 2024, and California estimated about 35,000 black bears in 2018, up from an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 in 1982. Biologists in Missouri stretch barbed wire around trees to make a hair snare. Hair that catches on the wire is sent to a lab for DNA analysis that shows how many individual bears were detected.

The black bear is the smallest of the bears that live in North America. Body length ranges from 0.75 to 2.00 meters and shoulder height from 0.50 to 1.00 meter. According to Animal Diversity Web, male black bears weigh between 47 and 409 kilograms and females between 39 and 236 kilograms. Males reach sexual maturity at 3 to 4 years but keep growing until they are 10 to 12 years old. Black bears are usually black, particularly in eastern North America, but some are brown or cinnamon colored, and some black bears in southeast Alaska have bluish-gray fur and are called glacier bears. Scientists list subspecies of the American black bear that include the cinnamon bear, the glacier bear, the Florida black bear, the Newfoundland black bear, the Kermode or spirit bear and the Louisiana black bear.

Black bears are very smart and curious animals; they can see and hear well enough, but smell is their best sense. As of November 2026, the National Park Service says black bears have an incredible sense of smell, about seven times stronger than a bloodhound's. Their claws always stay out; unlike a cat's claws, they cannot be pulled in. Black bears are good at climbing trees, and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game says their claws rarely grow more than 1 1/2 inches long. The International Association for Bear Research and Management and Washington's wildlife agency say a black bear can sprint up to about 35 miles per hour (55 kilometers per hour), while a national park page and a wildlife center page say black bears can run at up to about 30 miles per hour.

Black bears eat both plants and animals. What a black bear eats changes with the seasons: grasses and other green plants in spring, berries in summer, and nuts in fall. In many places only a small part of what black bears eat is animal matter, mostly colonial insects and grubs. Black bears also eat insects such as ants. Black bears are not active predators, and they eat other animals mainly when the chance comes. They prefer salmon, elk calves or deer fawns in places and seasons where these foods are plentiful. Where salmon are available, black bears eat salmon in late summer and fall. They help spread the seeds of the plants they eat.

In fall, black bears eat a lot of fruits and nuts to build up fat for the winter, and they may travel long distances to find food. Black bears spend the winter in dens. A den can be a hollow log, a hollow tree, or a space under tree roots or rocks. A black bear may hibernate for five to seven months of the year, and in the far north it may stay dormant in its den for about seven months; in its den it does not eat or drink for months. Spring, when black bears come out of their dens, is a hard time to find food.

Black bear cubs are born in winter, in the mother bear's den. After mating in summer, the black bear's fertilized egg does not start to grow until fall. Newborn cubs are blind and have almost no hair, and they are among the smallest babies, compared with their mother's size, of any mammal; they make humming sounds while nursing, which is a sign they are satisfied. Newborn cubs stay in the den with their mother all winter, and she feeds them. A mother black bear most often has two cubs at a time, and she has cubs every other year when there is enough food; adult black bears usually live alone, but a mother stays with her cubs. Cubs stay with their mother for about a year and a half, and they go into the den with her again the next winter.

Words to know

• subspecies: kind within species
• snare: hair trap
• dormant: winter rest
• fertilized: ready to grow