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Most bears that hibernate during the harsh winter months need a lot of fat to ensure that there body temperature does not drop too much. Most bears make the same protein called Low Density Lipoprotein (LDL) and it is more commonly known as cholesterol. It is located on the APOB gene and it is helps transport  lipids through the bloodstream. This shows that bears are similar in the proteins that they make because most bears hibernate and they mostly all make this protein.

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This image shows the similarities in DNA between bears both around today and extinct. The chart of similar DNA shows a lot of similarities between the bears that live in similar habitat such as the black bear, sloth bear and sun bear that all live in forest or woods environments. This proves that they are similar but also have there differences in DNA. Looking at the polar bear DNA it is nothing alike any of the bears that live in woodland/ forest habitats. It shows how much polar bears have truly diverged from the rest of the bears. Also, there are multiple of different species such as there are 3 polar bear DNA sequences and it shows that they are similar and the similarity within species is very high.

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The claws of bears are really big and sharp compared to those of most other species as shown in the picture. The polar bear claw and the grizzly bear claw are very similar. They are both very sharp because they are the most carnivorous out of the bears, or they hunt the most. Since they hunt the most their claws are long and sharp and they look very similar which shows that grizzly bears and polar bears are very closely related.

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Bears experience all types of natural selection but the most interesting piece of evolution to me is how Malayan sun bears evolved to get their long tongues. Because sun bears main food sources are bees nests for honey and termite nests, the bears with longer tongues were able to acquire more food which allowed them to live longer and produce offspring that had the long tongue gene. Then over generations the long tongue gene became more and more frequent and eventually became dominant.

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In the bear family there has been a lot of evolution over the coarse of their time on this planet. One example of descent with modification that is very evident within bears is that when the first grizzly bears moved north there was no white fur gene within the population. There was then a mutation in the population that gave the bears white fur. This mutation was better suited for the environment and it got passed on from generation to generation and now it is the dominant fur color of polar bears.

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Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Cordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Carnivora
Family: Ursidae
Genus: Ursus
Species: maritimus

Polar bears have a slender body with a long neck and head. Their fur color can range from pure white to yellow to light brown depending on the way the light is hitting it. Polar bears hind limbs are longer than their forelimbs, and the have 5 toed paws, a broad black nose, a small tail, and thick coarse fur that is water repellent and naturally white. Polar bears have been found as far as the North Pole but scientists believe the normal limit is 88 degrees north latitude and they have been spotted as low as Canada but it depends on how much ice forms. Polar bears prefer to live at spots where there is ice surrounding water so they can hunt.

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Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Cordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Carnivora
Family: Ursidae
Genus: Helarctos
Species: malayanus

Malayan sun bears have short heads and necks and have black dark fur with a little stripe of golden brown fur along the neck and chest. They also have long claws and relatively short arms with a big nose. They also have an abnormally long tongue. Malayan sun bears are found in mainland Southeast Asia. They usually occupy tropical evergreen rain forests. Malayan sun bears are nocturnal and feed on honey from bees nests which is the reason why they have such long tongues or they rip open termite nests or rip bark off trees so they have long claws and their big nose allows them to smell food in the dark.

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Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Cordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Carnivora
Family: Ursidae
Genus: Ailuropoda
Species: melanoleuca

Pandas have a relatively large head with a short tail and a large nose for a great sense of smell. They have white fur with black spots on limbs, shoulders, ears, nose, and eyes. An extension of the wrist acts as a thumb and have large and strong jaws. Pandas are commonly found in the mountains of central and western China. Their habitat used to be in the lowlands where there was bamboo but due to habitat loss they have been pushed to the mountains and now have to walk around to find bamboo. Pandas spend up to 12-15 hours eating bamboo a day, and unlike all other bears a panda is the only bear not to hibernate. They are known to seem lazy but they are pretty good at climbing trees and can swim. Cubs are very under developed and are blind and hairless at birth and can not even crawl.

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All bears are large animals, have fur, have claws, have four legs and small round ears located at the top corners of their heads. Bears diets are made up of mostly plants, but they are commonly found near streams or small rivers catching fish or aquatic life. Bears also give birth to live young. Bears are found all over the world; they are found in woodlands or fields all over the world, polar bears and other bears are found in the frozen tundra and Alaska while pandas are found in Asia. Bears are found all over the world and their habitats depend on where they live geographically. Bears often need to live in an environment where there is a lot of plants because there main diet is plants. Otherwise, bears like polar bears that live in the frozen tundra where there are no plants need to live near a body of water to catch aquatic life. All three of the exemplary organisms are unique from each other because they have different fur color, live in completely different habitats and have completely different diets.

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The taxonomy of the bears shows that they are closely related because the kingdom, phylum, class, order, and family are all the same for the three exemplary organisms. The taxonomy shows that all bears most likely came from a common ancestor at some point because their taxonomy is very similar and the only difference is the genus and species, which no two animals have the same genus and species.

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Punctuated equilibrium is the hypothesis that evolution occurs in short burst and that it is over a long period of time but the changes and formation of new species is rapid and happens does not take a long time to form the new species. Bears have experienced punctuated equilibrium over time because there changes over time have been very rapid. According to the phylogenetic tree the species of bear have only been around for about 30 million years and the changes in the species and the divergent evolution into different species has been in short periods of time. One great example of this is polar bears because it is dated that the first grizzly bears moved North around 125,000 years ago but then the first polar bear fossil was dated at 100,000 years ago so the evolution of polar bears was very quick in the scale of time as a whole.

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One of the mechanisms of evolution that is very apparent for bears is geographic isolation. Bears over time have been isolated geographically to different regions of the world and the habitats have been totally different so bears have evolved to best suit their environment. The map shows how bears are located all over the world in different regions and there is very little over lap between the regions of two different bears. Since bears are geographically isolated from one another, they have evolved and acquired different traits depending on their habitat.

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Adaptive radiation is the thought that species diversify because they need to fill different ecological niches. This has happened to bears because they have been isolated from each other into different niches throughout the world and they have evolved to best suit there new niches. A great example is polar bears because there main job in the Arctic is to be that main predator of the seal population to make sure that the seal population does not grow too large. They have evolved to best suit this by camouflaging with white fur to help sneak up on their prey.

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Bears over time have experienced divergent evolution. This means that at one point all bears came from a common ancestor and have branched off over time. When looking at the phylogenetic tree, it shows how bears, millions of years ago were all the same and there was most likely only one species of bear. Then the bears diverged or split up throughout time and are still very similar when looking at the phylogenetic tree.

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This phylogenetic tree shows that most present day bears are very closely related except for the panda bear and the spectacled bear. It shows that bears are a relatively new species and do not have a long history and even though most are geographically isolated from one another they are still very closely related to one another.

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All bears have 36 pairs of chromosomes along with the two sex chromosomes. This shows that bears are very similar in that they all have the same number of chromosomes which shows they all came from a common ancestor. It can also be observed that the difference between male and female for sloth bears and most other bears is different from humans from a chromosomal stand point. The difference is that in bears males just have "half" of a Y chromosome and in females they have a full Y chromosome. In humans it is that males have two X chromosomes. The relatedness between the male and female's 36 autosomal chromosomes is very high and they look almost identical.