Africa’s Lost Bears: What Really Happened?

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]Bears themselves, while occasionally terrifying, are quite awesome. They can be found on four of the world's seven continents, excluding Australia, Antarctica, and Africa. While Australia and Antarctica are quite isolated, Africa isn't. So, why aren't bears present on the continent? Well, believe it or not, bears actually do belong in Africa, and they've been found there as recently as a few hundred years ago. On top of this, these animals have an over 12 million-year history on the continent. So, what happened to them, and is there any chance they're still around today?

[00:00:37]So, the first bears that arrived in Africa weren't the traditional Ursus bears. Instead, they were actually short-faced bears. These bears were most likely opportunistic omnivores, and some of them were more than capable of getting up to 1,700 lb, making them about the same size as our largest modern-day polar bears. These bears likely reached the continent through land bridges, mainly the one that would have connected the Sinai [music] Peninsula to mainland Egypt. Once these bears reached Africa, they were able to spread across the continent with fossils even being found as far south as what is now modern-day South [music] Africa.

[00:01:13]Still, despite their success, they would end up going extinct about 2.5 million years ago for two main reasons, neither one of which is actually because of humans, which is a very nice refresher for a change. Instead, these short-faced bears went extinct on the continent due to the increasingly changing climate that came with the Ice Age, and also an increased amount of competition, predominantly felines such as the saber-toothed cats, and also the modern-day Panthera cats. It's also possible, considering the time period, that the Enhydriodon also played a part in the bears' decline. These creatures weren't felines or bears, but they were actually massive terrestrial river otters that evolved to be hypercarnivorous megafauna predators, on top of being able to survive the ever-changing climate. Now, getting back to the bears, while the short-faced bears would go extinct in Africa, shortly after their disappearance, a new niche would be opened up, allowing for our modern-day Ursus bears to begin arriving onto the continent. [music] While one species of short-faced bear, the spectacled bear, is still alive today in South America, in the rest of the world, they would be outcompeted by many other bear species, [music] with the Ursus genus being by far the most dominant. In modern day, there are four different species of bears in the Ursus genus, with by far the most widespread being the brown bear. There isn't just one or two, but in total, roughly 16 different subspecies of brown bear, two of which would end up reaching the African continent. Despite no longer being found in modern Africa, the Syrian brown bear almost certainly reached Egypt and lived in the region to some varying degree. This can be determined based on the presence of Egyptian art depicting brown bears, oftentimes [music] coexisting alongside other Egyptian animals, meaning that they almost certainly lived around ancient Egypt during that time period. Still, to what degree these bears did live in Africa is hotly contested, as there's no fossil evidence of these bears living west of the Sinai Peninsula, which they're now extinct in. Regardless, verified sightings still do occur of these bears up in Lebanon, only a few hundred miles away. In addition to this, a land bridge between the Sinai Peninsula and mainland Africa was present as little as a few hundred years ago, meaning that it's very possible that these bears were traveling into Egypt based on some art as recently as the 1700s. Though, despite this, based on how much art there is of these bears around the time of ancient Egypt, it's more likely that the population either had a significant decline or went extinct entirely in the 1st century.

[00:03:51]They likely stopped traveling to these areas or simply became extinct in them due to North Africa's climate beginning to change. In particular, North Africa started to become more hot and arid, leading to the ever-expansive Sahara desert we see in modern times. While these bears had nowhere to retreat to in Egypt, they did have multiple different places to retreat to in the Middle East, particularly in the many mountain ranges surrounding the Arabian Peninsula and most of Iran, where they are still occasionally sighted in modern day.

[00:04:23]These brown bears are quite unique in that they're much smaller than their typical brown bear counterparts, and they also have a very silvery color on top of a much more tame temperament. But they weren't the only brown bear subspecies to be found in Africa. The much larger and more typical-looking Atlas bear would be found in Africa all the way up until the 1800s, and sightings of them still occur in modern day. It's actually heavily debated as to how these bears got to the African continent. While some believe these bears traveled through the Sinai Peninsula in order to get to North Africa, other people believe that these bears might have actually crossed the Iberian Peninsula in order to get directly to the Atlas Mountains, where these bears would live.

[00:05:06]>> [music] >> The interesting thing about this hypothesis is that it would mean these bears swam over the 7-mi straight from Europe to Africa, which is actually more than possible considering the fact that Kodiak bears, another subspecies of brown bear, have been documented swimming over 30 mi from island to island. This would explain [music] why the Atlas bear more closely resembles its European counterparts instead of the Syrian brown bear. But unlike many other brown bear species, the Atlas bear wouldn't hang around the coast. Instead, it would live primarily in the Atlas Mountains, where it gets its name. The Atlas Mountains are quite unique as they're some of the only parts of North Africa that remain somewhat temperate once the continent became more arid.

[00:05:48]This has allowed for many different animal species to survive almost exclusively in these mountains hundreds of years after the Sahara dried up. Just like the bears, macaques, leopards, and even gazelles all inhabited the Atlas Mountains and chose to stay entirely within them so they could enjoy the cooler more temperate habitat. In these mountains, the bears were able to feast upon a multitude of different berries and nuts on top of the occasional animal carcass. [music] Because of their large lumbering nature, after all these bears could get up to 1,000 lb, it's more likely that they got their animal protein by stealing carcasses from other animals, which could explain why these bears were noted as being more aggressive than their Sinai Peninsula counterparts. [music] Unlike many of the other surrounding brown bear populations, these bears would have had the opportunity to steal kills from striped hyenas, Barbary leopards, Atlas Mountain wolves, and especially the Barbary lion, which it would have likely gone into conflict with. Tragically, both of these large North African predators would go extinct [music] for the same reasons, and it would all start with the Roman Empire. As many people already know, the Colosseum was full of all sorts of crazy [music] battles, and one of the things they really wanted to do was put gladiators up against some of Africa's deadliest [music] predators.

[00:07:06]While this wouldn't result in the Atlas bear's extinction, it did lead to thousands of these bears being driven out of their habitat and executed on European territory. And this significantly decreased their population, leading to many of these bears becoming more sparse and inbred.

[00:07:22]Sadly, this population declined would lead to these bears almost entirely disappearing from records after the 8th century. But these bears would continue to live on for another 1,000 years. Deep in the Moroccan Mountains, written documentation of these bears taking out cattle would continue hundreds of years after their alleged disappearance, and this would lead to European hunters going down deep into the Atlas Mountains in order to execute the last of these [music] grandiose giants. Sadly, this would lead to the last Atlas bear being shot and unalived in 1870. Only a few decades after that, the Barbary lion would disappear entirely, but that doesn't mean North Africa's devoid of wildlife. While sightings do exist, since none of them are credible, it's a pretty safe bet to say that bears have been successfully eliminated from the African [music] continent. Despite this, the Atlas Mountains have tons of other native animals. Foxes, wolves, hyenas, gazelles, leopards, monkeys, [music] and tons upon tons of different reptile and bird species all call the Atlas Mountains home. In addition to this, it's not entirely impossible that we could reintroduce the brown bear to the Atlas Mountains in the future. With that being said, if you enjoyed this video, please feel free to like and subscribe and press little high button thingy cuz finally, I'm getting back to making regular content, and I got tons more stuff coming real soon. So, do those things or else this bear might eat your face off. Goodbye.