Common characteristics of modern bears include a large body with stocky legs, a long snout, shaggy hair, plantigrade paws with five nonretractile claws, and a short tail.
The English word "bear" comes from Old English bera and belongs to a family of names for the bear in Germanic languages, in origin from an adjective meaning "brown".
Bears are generally bulky and robust animals with relatively short legs. Bears are sexually dimorphic with regard to size, with the males being larger.
The bears are mostly found in the northern hemisphere, with a single species, the spectacled bear, occurring in South America. The Atlas Bear, a subspecies of the Brown Bear, was the only bear native to Africa.
