The Kamchatka brown bear (Ursus arctos beringianus ), also known as the "Far Eastern brown bear", or in Russian: Камчатский бурый медведь, romanized: Kamchatsky bury medved, is a subspecies of brown bear.
The Kamchatka brown bear is the biggest brown bear in Eurasia, with a body length of 2.4 m (7.9 ft) to 3 m (9.8 ft) tall on hind legs, and a weight up to at least 650 kg (1,430 lb). It is nearly the size of the Kodiak bear; however, the skull is broader than that of the Ussuri brown bear, and compared to that of the Kodiak bear, the breadth of the skull is much greater in proportion to its length, the anterior narial opening is much shorter, and the molars differ in relative size and form. The greatest skull length for males is 40.3–43.6 cm (15.9–17.2 in), and they are 25.8–27.7 cm (10.2–10.9 in) wide, while the skulls of females measure 37.2–38.6 cm (14.6–15.2 in) in length and 21.6–24.2 cm (8.5–9.5 in) in width. Fur colour is predominantly dark brown with a violet tint. Light coloured individuals are rarely encountered.
It is native to the Anadyrsky District, the Kamchatka Peninsula, Karaginskiy Island, the Kuril Islands, the coastal strip west of the Sea of Okhotsk southward to the Stanovoy Range, and the Shantar Islands in the Far East. Outside the former Soviet Union, the subspecies occurs in Saint Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea. It is closely related to one clade of brown bears in Alaska and northwest North America, and is thought to be the ancestor of the Kodiak bear.
In the summer period they feed on blueberries, crowberries, humpback salmon, and steelhead. In autumn, they eat nuts from nut-pines and mountain ash, and fish. In times of famine they eat dead fish or marine mammals, berries, and graminoid vegetation.
