Grizzly bear

The largest carnivores in North America today are grizzly bears. Massive animals with enormous teeth, that can bite through steel bolts, grizzly bears can weigh as much as 780 kilograms!

Fresh fish is a favourite food of grizzlies. Most of all they like salmon. The best place to find the huge bears is at streams, especially when salmon swim up the streams from the ocean to spawn. Also grizzlies eat rodents, insects, fruit, nuts, grasses, honey and they won’t pass up meat especially if it is easy to grab. They can eat 9 kg of meat at one time. These bears will try to catch anything that runs, and they can cover 45 kilometers per hour.

Adult male bears don’t like to share their territory with other adult males, so if two meet, there is usually a match to decide who gets to stay. A mother grizzly will try to avoid adult males, because sometimes they kill cubs.

Vocabulary:

1. carnivore ['kɑːnɪvɔː] – плотоядное животное

2. carnivorous [kɑː'nɪv(ə)rəs] – плотоядный

3. cub [kʌb] – детеныш

4. grab [græb] – хватать, схватить

5. rodent ['rəud(ə)nt] – грызун

6. salmon ['sæmən] – лосось

7. spawn [spɔːn] – метать икру

Wolverine

Wolverines belong to the musteline family, a group that includes badgers and weasels. With its broad face and bone-crashing jaws, wolverine looks more like a bear than like the weasels that are its true relatives.

Wolverines are skillful, fierce and aggressive hunters that control large territories. They can lope along tirelessly covering many kilometers a day. Also wolverines can climb trees as quickly as they are able to move on the ground. Winter is the season when wolverines rule. Their widespread toes are perfect for galloping around on the top of the snow. Wolverines eat a wide range of food from small rodents like lemmings to large animals like elk and deer, bird eggs, berries. The fierce little beasts take surprise attacks and kill by biting neck. Although it is a relatively small animal, it has been to drive even grizzly bears and cougars away from its kills.

Wolverines don’t care whether their food id dead or alive when they find it. Their menu also includes dead animals. Having found a dead body, a wolverine may tear it apart and hide the pieces in several different places. Because of their great appetites wolverines have got another name: they are also called gluttons.

But these remarkable animals have themselves been hunted in many parts of the world. Their skins are valued by arctic peoples because ice crystals don’t stick to the fur.

Vocabulary:

1. badger ['bæʤə] – барсук

2. cougar ['ku:gə] – пума, кугуар

3. fierce [fɪəs] – свирепый

4. glutton ['glʌt(ə)n] – обжора

5. lope [ləup] – бегать вприпрыжку

6. musteline family ['mʌstəli:n] – семейство куниц

7. toe [təu] – палец на ноге

8. weasel ['wi:z(ə)l] – ласка

9. wolverine ['wulv(ə)ri:n] – росомаха

Cougar

Cougars can adapt their habits to live in almost any type of country, from forests to swamps to mountains. People call these beautiful cats by many different names, including mountain lions, panthers, pumas, and catamounts. Cougars are amazing agile cats. They are fantastic jumpers. From the ground they can leap more than four meters into the air, and ten meters long. They have been known to jump more than 7 times their own height straight up into trees, or escape down cliffs. Running after prey, a cougar can switch directions quickly, even in the snow. A favourite cougar trick is to leap onto the back of its prey. Cougars hunt for deer, beavers, and other animals.