Intel Education: Meet the Bears: Alike or Different?

	Meet the Bears Alike or Different?

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Name _____________________

Buddy ________________________

Compare the Bears

1) Directions: Pick two kinds of bears to study. Find out how big they are, what they eat, and where they live. Then think about how the bears compare.

(Note to the teacher: This page can be used as an assignment sheet by deleting the sample responses.

Species Length	Sloth bear	Polar bear
Length	5 to 6 feet long.	7 to 10 feet long.
Weight	175 to 310 pounds.	440 to 1760 pounds.
Food	Termites, fruits, plants, eggs, insects, honey, and carrion (already dead animals).	Seals, walrus, a few narwhal or beluga, carrion (already dead animals), berries, plants (there are not many to eat).
Range	Grasslands, and forests around India.	Way north, Alaska, Canada, Europe, Russia, icy areas around the shorelines.
Compare	The biggest sloth bear is smaller than the smallest polar bear. Polar bears are hunters, sloth bears are not. A sloth bear eats nothing from the ocean. They both eat carrion and some plants, but their diets are very different. The polar bear lives near the north pole where it's really cold, and the sloth bear lives around India where it is hot. A polar and sloth bear would never meet, except maybe in the zoo.

What They Eat

2) Directions: Write what each bear eats. The foods they both eat goes in the center, where the circles overlap.
Kind of Bear: Sloth Bear

Kind of Bear: Polar Bear

Comparison Chart

3) Directions: Draw a picture of each bear on some art paper. Show the bear doing what it does most of the time. Write sentences to tell what is happening in the picture.

Have your 4^th class mentor help you write down where you got the information.

The Bear Den - www.bearden.org/slobear.html

Wexo, John, Bears, Wildlife Education, San Diego, CA 2000.

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