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Bears live in extremely different habitats – from the drifting ice of the Arctic to woods in temperate zones to tropical rainforest.

Great bears

Great bears mainly reside in the northern hemisphere. They primarily live in mountainous regions and large areas of woodland stretching to the Arctic. The coastal regions of the Arctic to the north of the Arctic Circle and the adjoining drifting ice make up the habitat of the polar bear. Brown bears once spread out from North Africa across the whole of Eurasia to North America. Today, only a few populations remain in Europe and in America too their distribution is mainly limited to Alaska and western Canada. The North American black bear is distributed from Canada to Mexico whilst the habitat of the Asian black bear stretches from eastern Siberia to China and Japan and from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Vietnam and Thailand. The Malayan sun bear resides in south-east Asia from Myanmar and Thailand to Malaysia, Sumatra and Borneo. The spectacled bear is the only South American amongst the great bears: it lives in the forests of the Andes from Venezuela to Chile. The giant panda can now only be found in the south-west of China.

The raccoon family

The raccoon family is primarily native to North, Central and South America. Only the lesser panda lives on the southern slopes of the Himalayas and in western China. The raccoon has only been common in Central Europe since the beginning of the 20th century after it was released there or escaped from fur farms.