A Geographical Problem.

Since NCIS is supposed to be an adult drama for adult audiences one might expect that it would avoid the scientific errors which one might assume to be found in sitcoms aimed at children.

I have noticed many sitcoms for children have biological and zoological errors.

For example, the Austin & Ally episode "Boyfriends & Badges", June 8, 2013, involved a camping trip where the usually well informed Ally gave advice about what to do when meeting bears of different colors and her advice was bad for both brown bears Ursus arctos and American black bears Ursus americanus. And members of both species can have fur of several different shades - including both brown and black.

I didn't see the beginning of the NCIS episode "Leave No Trace" on 10 October 2022 and so I didn't hear which national park the body was found in that started the case.

Later one of the characters returned to that national park where the murder happened and encountered an aggressive bear.

An aggessive bear with brown fur.

Brown bears can have black fur and black bears can have brown fur, so the fur color is evidence but not proof of the species of the bear.

In the Austin & Ally episode Ally spoke of the possibility of encountering black or brown bears during a camping trip from Miami, Florida, and the bear that was seen had brown fur. The nearest wild brown bears to Miami should be in northwest Wyoming over a thousand miles from Miami. That's qute a camping trip.

And in the NCIS episode the agents based in Washington, DC were investigating the death of a navy crewman in a national park where there was a bear with brown fur. The nearest wild brown bears to Washington, DC should be in northwest Wyoming over a thousand miles from the capital.

So the agents would have had quite a long trip to investigate the murder in the national park. And I can't help thinking that there wasn't time in the episode for all the trips back and forth, and that the murder should have been investigated by NCIS: New Orleans or NCIS: Los Angeles . Possibly even NCIS: Hawaii would be as close to brown bears as NCIS.

So posibly if asked the producers would clam that the bear was a black bear with rare brown fur, or that it was a brown Bear which escaped from capitivity into a national park within a reasonable distance of Washington DC.

Added 10-12-2022 I saw the begininng of "Leave no trace" and the park was established as Shenandoah National Park, about 75 miles west of Washington DC. And somone did talk about a black bear (Ursus americanus) acting weird in the area.

But the bear or fake bear used had brown fur. So if the living or fake bear was selected after the script was finalized the person selecting it didn't consider the color of the fur to be as important as the price or other factors. And maybe that didn't leave production time to have a character mention the difference between black bears and bears with black fur.

I note that in the eastern USA the bear susbspecies is the eastern black bear (Ursus americanus americanus) which almost always has black fur. And nobody in the episode mentioned how rare the brown fur on the bear was. I, personally would be shocked to see a wild bear with brown fur in Virginia.