American black bear
Morris Michtom, the creator of the teddy bear, was inspired to make the toy when he came across a cartoon of Theodore Roosevelt refusing to shoot an American black bear cub tied to a tree. The fictional character Winnie-the-Pooh was named after Winnipeg, a female American black bear cub that lived at the London Zoo from 1915 until her death in 1934. An American black bear cub, who in the spring of 1950 was caught in the Capitan Gap Fire, was made into the living representative of Smokey Bear, the mascot of the United States Forest Service.