The polar bear has an average weight of 900 to 1,500 pounds and is considered the world's largest bear with the brown bear, averaging 500 to 900 pounds a close second. The largest polar bear ever recorded was shot in Kotzebue Sound, Alaska in 1960 weighing a grizzly 1002 kilograms or 2,210 pounds and stood 11 feet 11 inches in height. The largest brown bear, a Kodiak bear, which is a subspecies of the brown bear, weighed in at over 2,500 pounds and was almost 14 feet tall.