Out on the prairie, a big male jaguar has introduced down a fats younger camel, which is able to fulfill his abdomen for days. However right here comes Nita now, all 495 kg of her, and he or she’s simply as hungry. As she approaches the large cat, she lets out a warning huff. The jaguar responds with an indignant snarl, however Nita retains proper on coming and huffs even louder. Now the jaguar steps in entrance of his kill, vegetation his toes, and roars defiantly, which tells Nita that it’s time to take issues to the subsequent stage. She rears as much as her full peak of almost three metres, raises her brawny arms, and emits an extended, low growl. Sufficiently persuaded, the jaguar lowers his head and slinks away in defeat, whereas Nita settles all the way down to take pleasure in her purloined lunch . . .
CollectA’s sole prehistoric mammal for 2025 is the North American short-faced bear often known as Arctodus. Two species existed through the Pleistocene: A. pristinus, the lesser short-faced bear from the japanese U.S. and A. simus, the extra well-known large one with a variety extending throughout many of the U.S. and into Canada and Mexico. This toy represents the latter. A. simus is the most important recognized carnivore to have inhabited North America since Tyrannosaurus rex, with males or boars rising as much as 950 kg/2094 lbs in weight and standing 3.4 metres/11’ tall when rearing up on their hind legs and 5’6” when on all fours. Females or sows have been considerably smaller, however at as much as 500 kg/1102 lbs and maybe 3 metres/9.8’ tall when rearing up, they have been nonetheless as massive as trendy male Kodiak bears. Seeing as how this toy has no seen genitalia (in contrast to most different CollectA prehistoric mammals), and seeing as how March is Girls’s Historical past Month in Australia, the U.Okay., and the U.S., I’ve chosen to make mine a sow by the title of Nita (pronounced ‘nit’), which is the Choctaw phrase for bear.
Nita is sculpted rearing up on her hind legs along with her proper arm raised excessive and bent on the elbow and her massive paw pointing outward, as if she is hanging at one thing along with her massive claws. Her left arm is held decrease, but additionally with the paw going through outward. Her head is tilted up and her mouth is open. This pose is almost an identical to that of the Arctodus mount at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago; certainly, that mount was doubtless the inspiration for this toy. Bears do invariably look way more imposing when standing on their hind legs and Nita isn’t any exception. She might be scaring away a smaller carnivore from its meal like within the opening vignette, or she might be going through off in opposition to one other Arctodus. Prehistoric bears, like trendy ones, would have recurrently gotten into fights over meals and territory, and within the case of sows, in protection of their cubs in opposition to hungry boars.
Nita stands (and he or she stands completely nicely on clean surfaces) only a smidgen over 17 cm tall, which makes her the tallest out of all of CollectA’s Cenozoic beasts, much more so than the two Paraceratheriums. And at 280 g in weight, she is now their heaviest terrestrial carnivorous beast, toppling the 206 g Andrewsarchus.
Arctodus has lengthy been depicted by paleoartists as having medium brown fur identical to a contemporary grizzly bear. Nita, nonetheless, bucks that pattern by having distinctly gray brown fur with minimal mild brown wash and darkened patches on her waist and again. Her claws and the padding on her paws are darkish gray. A big cream-coloured patch covers her chest, throat, and muzzle and there’s a mild brown, fork-shaped marking on her brow much like those discovered on modern spectacled bears. Her eyes are medium brown, her nostril is darkish gray, her mouth is darkish pink, and her enamel are cream. It’s fairly a welcome change from the same old brown shades we see on so many prehistoric mammal toys, and it’s definitely a believable color scheme.
Nita’s fur is laboriously sculpted to look thick and shaggy, identical to on most trendy bears. Her claws are massive and curved, but additionally blunted on the suggestions. That is additionally identical to trendy bears, particularly brown ones, which recurrently make use of their claws for duties like climbing bushes (though that’s most likely not one thing Arctodus adults engaged in), stripping bark off bushes and flipping over heavy stones to search out bugs, and digging up roots and rodents or creating dens. And naturally, in addition they use their claws to assist grasp struggling prey and to defend themselves.
Arctodus is known for having proportionally longer limbs than any extant bear, and that is definitely mirrored on Nita. Her species was at one time envisioned as a fast-running hypercarnivore that quickly pursued and tackled grownup horses, camels, bison, and different massive herbivores, however this notion has since fallen out of favour. As an alternative, the lengthy limbs might have helped present elevated motor effectivity, permitting their proprietor to journey farther whereas expending much less power. Nita’s paws are equally slender and elongated, albeit no much less intimidating due to these aforementioned claws. The pads masking the soles of her paws on them look thick and leathery. Those on the entrance paws even function partial false thumbs, that are one thing missing in brown, black, and polar bears, however current on giant pandas and spectacled bears in addition to Arctodus. These “thumbs” might have assisted their proprietor in greedy meals.
And at last we come to Nita’s head, and what a fearsome head it’s. Her mouth is huge open and her lips are curled, exposing all of her sharp entrance enamel and her flattened rear ones. Her nostrils are widened, her snout is furrowed, her ears are perked, and her tiny eyes appear to blaze. Once more, no matter you want to think about she’s doing, she’s doing it with fury. And he or she’s no stranger to violence judging from the seen nick on her proper ear. Between her visage and her dimension, it’s not in any respect troublesome to think about her and different Arctodus being fairly able to making a dwelling as scavengers and kleptoparasites. Utilizing their lengthy limbs to trek nice distances throughout the Pleistocene plains, they might have sniffed out the kills of gray wolves, dire wolves, jaguars just like the one within the opening vignette, and even the formidable American lion and Smilodon fatalis. They’d then bully (or attempt to bully) these different carnivores into abandoning their hard-won meals (boars, with their better dimension, most likely did this extra often than sows). Additionally they would have hunted prey themselves when needed, though their prime pace might have been between 40 and 45 km/h, which is just barely sooner than a polar bear and slower than a grizzly (recorded at 48 km/h). And they’d have consumed plant matter equivalent to leaves, roots, grasses, nuts, and fruits, crunching them up with their sturdy jaws. It’s also price noting that despite its well-known moniker, Arctodus‘ face actually wasn’t notably shorter than these of most dwelling bears. As an alternative, its face was a lot deeper, so actually, “deep-faced bear” is a extra becoming description.
The Deluxe Arctodus is my favorite out of all of the 2025 CollectA toys. I reckon it’s about as correct as one can ask for, it’s acquired a particular color scheme, it’s fantastically sculpted, and it’s large and appears delightfully scary. My most honest thanks to CollectA for the evaluate pattern. I do hope that we get extra prehistoric bear toys sooner or later, as they’re comparatively uncommon, and most to this point have been cave bears. Another species can be most welcome, particularly the one one which was much more large than A. simus: Arctotherium angustidens of South America.
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