Joseph Bond, Age 10, Of Ottawa, Ont., Canada, for his question:

Are there bears in Africa?

There is a large assortment of bears in the world, and most of them live north Of the equator. There is only one native bear in South America. No native bears have ever lived in Australia or New Zealand. Today, the only bears in Africa live in zoos. But there was a time when wild bears were at home among the north African Mountains. 

Bears are smart and clownish characters, though it is wise to watch them fron A distance. The bears in our national parks seem like friendly fellows, and most of them are. But they are mighty strong animals, armed with sharp claws. A hungry bear might grab your sandwich and maybe rip a gash in your arm. A playful bear may give you a friendly pat and break a bone. So let's be friends, but not close friends With the bears most of the world's bears live in the American Northwest and in southeast Asia.

This shaggy fellows are great travelers. They can shuffle along for miles over Valleys and prairies. They can cross streams and rivers and make their way through tangled woods. They are skillful mountain climbers and can scramble up steep slopes and cross snow capped peaks on their paddy paws.
 You would expect such adventurous rovers to travel from land to land, from Continent to continent. You would expect to find at least a few wild bears in the Lonely stretches of every country in the world, but this is not so. Bears never reached Australia. So far as we know, they never reached central or South Africa to  share the grassy veldt lands with the lion and the zebra, the long legged ostrich and the long necked giraffe. But in the past, a certain 'o ear and his kinfolk made his home in North Africa. Scientists found his fossil bones among the atlas mountains and named him Crowther's Bear. But the shaggy mountain bear has long since disappeared from his lofty home, and today there are no native bears in Africa.

There are bears in China and Japan. The long haired little honey bear lives In India and Ceylon. The glossy black sunbear with his pale brown face lives in Borneo and Sumatra, Burma and Malay. The brown syrian bear has lived in Palestine  since biblical  days. The grizzly and the kodiak bears, the siberian and the polar bears are giants Of the far north. But during the ice ages, even bigger cave bears roamed all over Europe. The legions of Julius Caesar found bears in Britain and sent them to be put on display in Rome. The last of England's wild bears died out 1100 years ago and Africa's bears died out thousands of years ago.