Short answers, pulled from the story.
Proto-Germanic tribes replaced their original word for bear, arkto, with a substitute meaning roughly "the brown one" because they feared that speaking the animal's true name might cause it to appear. Author Ralph Keyes identifies this substitution as the oldest known euphemism.
Eight species of bears are alive today. They are found primarily in the Northern Hemisphere across North America, Europe, and Asia, with one exception: the spectacled bear is native to South America's Andean region. The sun bear ranges below the equator in Southeast Asia.
During hibernation, a bear's heart rate drops from around 55 beats per minute to as few as 9, and body temperature falls by 4 to 7 degrees Celsius. A protein in heart muscle called myosin enters a super-relaxed state that minimizes energy consumption, allowing bears to go up to 100 days without eating, drinking, urinating, or defecating.
The giant panda belongs to the subfamily Ailuropodinae, which was the first lineage to diverge from other living bears, around 19 million years ago. Despite being classified in the bear family, the panda has only 42 chromosomes compared to the 74 found in the six ursine bear species, and its diet is over 99% bamboo from 30 different species.
The city of Bern in Switzerland is by legend derived from Bär, the German word for bear. The Celtic bear goddess Artio, also known as Dea Artio, was worshipped at Bern, and evidence of her cult has been found there.
The teddy bear was named after the American statesman Theodore Roosevelt. In 1902, Roosevelt refused to shoot an American black bear that had been tied to a tree, and toy makers commemorated the act by naming their stuffed bear toys after him.