An Iranian boy found a Syrian brown bear cub in 1942, and sold it to the 22nd Artillery Supply Company of the Polish II Corps for canned meat. That's how the story of the most famous military animal started.

A three-year-old Asiatic Black bear named Champa has just undergone successful surgery to remove a buildup of water in her brain. It marks the first time in medical history that a bear has been given such a procedure.

Very few predators think humans would make a tasty treat, but polar bears are members of that exclusive club. While shooting his BBC documentary series The Polar Bear Family and Me, filmmaker Gordon Buchanan was approached by a hungry, 1,000-pound polar bear as he sat in his plexiglass pod. He marvels at her…

Worried that your period will attract unwanted attention from wild bears? Fear not! By referencing actual studies that look at actual bears' reactions to actual human menstrual blood, boingboing's Maggie-Koerth Baker has helped clear up some of the fact and fiction surrounding bears and lady business — and it's…

Bears are smart. Like, a lot smarter than most people give them credit for. But that doesn't mean they don't still make mistakes — say, winding up trapped inside a massive trash can, for instance. Fear not, wee ursine triplets! Here come some daring humans to the rescue!

You hear that? That's the sound of your afternoon plans evaporating. Alaska's Katmai National Park has teamed up with explore.org to bring you live, high-definition footage of brown bears hunting for salmon at sites throughout the park, and it's probably the coolest thing you'll see today.

A scan of polar bear DNA has shown that polar bears came into existence far earlier than previously assumed. Working with fossils alone, scientists had thought that polar bears, after intermingling with brown bears, made their first snowy white appearance anywhere between 60,000 to 600,000 years ago. But a genetic…

We've seen some deranged vintage body armor before, but nothing as gutsy as this costume, which transformed the wearer into a 19th-century Pinhead. A commenter on the Foundation of the American Institute for Conservation message boards had this to say about such a suit in 1998 (we're assuming this description refers to …

The Second World War has provided a seemingly endless array of fascinating stories — not least of which is the curious tale of an orphaned brown bear who was taken in by the Polish army and made an active member of the troop. As unbelievable as it sounds, Wojtek the bear was an official member of the 22nd Artillery…

For the obvious reasons of human safety and animal cruelty, bear wrestling hasn't been in vogue for several decades. But up until the 1980s, bear wrestling was the stuff of amateur wrestling matches and basketball halftime diversions. Here are some surreal tableaus of humans getting the crud smacked out of them by much …