Holy Cow! Yellowstone Grizzly Has Five Cubs, Topping Grizzly 399’s 2020 Quadruplets

UPDATE: Yellowstone Says Grizzly With Five Cubs The Most Ever Recorded In Park

Among grizzlies, twin cubs are somewhat common, triplets are rare and quadruplets rarer still. That’s why a Yellowstone tour guide was so surprised to see a Wyoming momma grizzly with quintuplets — five cubs.

Andrea Baratte on Wednesday afternoon shared a video with Cowboy State Daily that he’d taken that morning of a grizzly sow with five cubs in tow behind her in Yellowstone National Park’s Northern Range.

“I’m so glad that I got to document it, otherwise nobody would have believed it,” he said.

The brief video shows the mother grizzly ambling away, and the cubs following after, lining up one after the other.

Topping 399

Wyoming’s beloved Grizzly 399 wowed the world in 2020 when she emerged from her den in Grand Teton National Park with a litter of four cubs.

She raised all four to the age of independence, about 2 years old.

However, shortly after they separated from 399 in 2022, one of the cubs, a male, was killed by wildlife agents after reportedly becoming too acclimated to settled areas and displaying dangerous behavior toward humans.

Didn’t Believe It At First

Baratte has guided for Yellowstone Adventure Tours for four years, so he’s used to seeing fantastic and unusual things in the park.

But when he got word that a grizzly with five cubs had been spotted, he had a hard time believing it and had to see for himself.

At about 9 a.m. Wednesday, he found the spot where the grizzly and her cubs had stopped to rest, and a crowd had already gathered to watch from a distance.

“When I found her, she was bedded down and I couldn’t see all the cubs,” he said. “But I managed to get some video just as she walked away, with all five cubs.”

Baratte added that he’s never heard of a litter of five grizzly cubs.

“I went and checked all of my scientific literature afterward, and I could not find anything referencing a grizzly litter of five cubs,” Baratte said.

Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.