Kermode Bear - Ursus americanus kermodei

The Kermode bear is a white black bear. Sounds strange, eh!?
It is neither a polar bear nor an albino black bear.
It is a white black bear, really!

The aboriginal people of British Columbia call this white bear a ‘spirit bear’.

This subspecies of the black bear is named after the zoologist Mr. Frank Kermode who studied this white furred black bear early 1900’s.

On average 1 out of 10 black bears in the Great Bear Rain Forest of west-central British Columbia has white fur.  The highest concentration of these bears lives on and around Princess Royal Island.

Imagine you would spot one while travelling Canada!

As a biologist and your tour guide Canada, I will try to explain why a black bear can be white.

• Realize ‘black bear’ is the name of a species, just as ‘grizzly bear’, and ‘polar bear’ are.
  
• Genes determine most physical traits, like red hair and a fair skin with humans.  Just as this example, the white fur of black bears is an inherited trait. 
  
• A black bear that expresses the recessive ‘white fur’ trait is called a Kermode bear.
  

Reproductive cells (gametes) carry only half of the chromosomes that body cells carry.
Therefore, all gametes have just one allele for every trait in them. 
Allele pairs (two of each trait) form again during fertilization: the moment ovum and sperm fuse.  

Hence, it is possible that a black bear mom has a white furred cub and a black furred cub in the same litter. Assume mom and her partner are both physically black and heterozygous for fur colour.
Chances are 25% a white cub will be born and 75% for black cubs. 

When one or both of the black parents are homozygous dominant, all the offspring will be black furred.
When two white black bears reproduce (both heterozygous recessive), all the offspring will be Kermode bears or ‘spirit bears’.