Black bears actually come in a variety of colours, ranging from creamy white to chocolate brown or shiny black, with many shades in between. Grizzly bears usually sport brownish to yellow coats with white tipped guard hairs that give them their grizzled appearance but their fur can also range from blond to completely black.

Since colour is not a reliable tool for differentiating between grizzlies and black bears, you’ll find the answer in their shoulders. Grizzlies have a distinctive shoulder hump while black bears don’t. You can spot another difference in their faces. A black bear’s forehead is similar to a dog’s, falling in a bridge-like line straight from the forehead to the tip of the nose. A grizzly’s face by comparison, is slightly concave, with relatively small eyes and short, rounded ears. When it comes to size, black bears weigh between 100 to 150 kilograms (220 to 330 pounds), while a grizzly can weigh from 150 to 385kg (330 to 850lbs).

In most of North America, black bears are more common than grizzlies, ranging across Canada and in isolated pockets in the northern and western United States. They live in the both the Canadian and American Rocky Mountains. Grizzlies are not as common nor as abundant as black bears, with the species’ highest numbers living in the mountain parks. Since all bears spend much of their life sleeping through winter, come summer, they are on a mission to fill their bellies. Ninety-five per cent of the black bear’s diet consists of plant materials, including leaves, buds, flowers, berries, fruits and roots. Black bears will also eat insects, bees, honey, occasionally kill young hoofed mammals and will seek out carrion and human garbage. That’s why keeping a clean campsite in the backcountry is so important – a bear who learns to associate people as a food source will do so repeatedly, putting both itself and people at risk.

Between 70 and 80 per cent of a grizzly’s diet also consists of plants, including leaves, stems, flowers, roots and fruits. But grizzlies also eat other mammals, fish and insects, sometimes digging up ground squirrels, marmots and mice or killing a bighorn sheep, as well as actively seeking out carrion. Both black bears and grizzlies mate in the springtime, then give birth in their dens during winter to one to four cubs. Black bear cubs leave their mothers after two years, but grizzlies stay with theirs for three or four.

As with all wild animals, never approach a bear. Take your photos from the safety of your car and drive away as soon as you’ve snapped your shot, so as not to encourage others to create a dangerous ‘bear jam’ on the roadway.