Bear facts for kids: 6 bears (and look-alikes) to research

There are only eight true bear species, and they include the largest land carnivores alive: a male polar bear can weigh 600 kilograms and hunts seals on the Arctic sea ice, while a grizzly may put on a kilogram of fat a day before winter and can eat dozens of salmon in a day during the run. The giant panda is a bear too, but one that eats almost nothing except bamboo, up to 38 kilograms of it a day, gripped with a wrist bone that works like a thumb. Two animals here are not bears at all, however much they look it. The koala is a marsupial that sleeps up to 20 hours a day on eucalyptus leaves, and the red panda is the last member of its own family, closer to raccoons and weasels than to bears; both are named for a resemblance, not a relationship. Polar bears, pandas and koalas are all listed as Vulnerable, and red pandas as Endangered.