Salmon’s Worst Nightmare: Watch 20+ Hungry Grizzly All Descend On The Same River

grizzly
Antoni Murcia/Shutterstock.com

Written by Sharon Parry

Updated: October 20, 2023

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We’ve all read that grizzlies love a salmon snack but you won’t have seen anything quite like this!

See Below To Watch The Fish Feast!

Grizzlies and Their Diet

Grizzly bears (Ursus Arctos Horriblis) are a native species of North America and are easy to spot by their muscular shoulder hump and their slightly silver, or grizzled, appearance. They are a type of brown bear and can grow up to 700 pounds. Grizzlies are a threatened species and are extinct in California. This footage was captured at Brooks Falls in Alaska where they tend to move around to follow food sources. Whilst this is sometimes referred to as a ‘migration’, these bears do not actually migrate.

They just gather in certain areas when food is plentiful. In Alaska, the spring sees them on low-elevation south-facing slopes and riparian forests where they can eat early green vegetation and hunt moose. In summer you will find many of them fishing for salmon! This is when the salmon head upstream to spawn and to do this they have to leap up waterfalls. As they leap, they are an easy catch for a quick-witted bear.

Katmai National Park, Alaska

Grizzly bears are omnivores and eat plants, meat, and fish

Feeding Time for the Bears

Grizzly bears are usually solitary animals but are willing to gather together to share such a plentiful source of food. In this clip, you can see bears wading in the water. Many of them are just above a shallow waterfall so that they can intercept the salmon as they try to leap. The bears are staring intently at the water!

Watch closely and you will see a salmon leap straight into one bear’s grasp. The fish is flapping around in the bear’s mouth as it tries to back away from the waterfall. The bear tries to hold the salmon steady in its front paws so that it can eat it.

Brown bears are omnivores – they eat plants and other animals. They need as much as 90 pounds of food each day. Grizzlies eat berries, grasses, roots, and fungi. They also find insects and mice if they can. However, these powerful animals are perfectly capable of hunting larger prey such as the moose and elk. These bears, however, seem to be rather keen on salmon!


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About the Author

Dr Sharon Parry is a writer at A-Z animals where her primary focus is on dogs, animal behavior, and research. Sharon holds a PhD from Leeds University, UK which she earned in 1998 and has been working as a science writer for the last 15 years. A resident of Wales, UK, Sharon loves taking care of her spaniel named Dexter and hiking around coastlines and mountains.

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