Ursine usages with edifying footnote on Burma

[Jonathan Lighter]

According to a naturalist in Juneau, whose name I naturally didn't get, there's no "real difference" between the grizzly bear and the Alaska brown bear. "If they're on an island or coastal, we call them 'brown bears.' If they're on land, we call them 'grizzlies.' "

  Use of the name "grizzly" as the unique and proper designation of _Ursus arctos horribilis_ seems to be a term of zoological art rather than common usage; the OED advises that _grizzly_ descends from "grizzled."  Yet a greyish or silvery "blond" is a color variation of the common "black bear" (_Ursus americanus_). According to the caption beneath the mounted specimen at Juneau International Airport, _black bears_ of this description are popularly referred to as "glacier bears" (not in OED).   Yet their color is exactly what many of us associtate with the typical grizzly (also called the "silvertip").

  Am sure there is more of interest to say on this entiresubject, but that's all I know at the moment, except that Admiralty Island is home to the tiny (human) settlement of Angoon* as well as about 1700 _horribilis_,  making for the world's highest concentration of _grizzly bears_ and lowest human-to-grizzly-bear ratio.

  JL

  *Not to be confused with "Rangoon," which Myanmarese coup leaders have renamed "Yangon," a name not recognized by the U.S. State Department. A new capital is under construction deep in the former "Burmese" jungles, owing in large part to a dire metaphysical prophecy.




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