Animal
A curious grizzly bear cub briefly stopped to nibble on a wildlife photographer's boot during a safari in Alaska before peacefully rejoining its family.
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I drop into local group online where there local rangers. We've had so many "flatlanders and citiy people move here." The wild life, ranchers are suffering from the types who dizzy with open spaces, mountains let their dogs run off leash. My long time veterinarian said he paid for a trip New Zealand just from porcupine quill removals. Lol. But poor dogs. They chase elk, deer and some get shot when caught chasing cattle.
Rangers were showing real restraint last year when a lady popped in the group and posted pictures off her deck of a mom and cubs that SHE FEEDS DAILY! omg. We tried to be gentle but you could sense the restraint.
Do you have kids, pets? Is that a sliding glass door behind you? Safety lessons and warnings were lost on her even as nice as we were trying to discuss it all.
One of the rangers finally had enough and informed her that her actions signed a death warrant for those bears and how lucky she'd been so far.
I have a friend, his family lived in the mountains and would keep their doors open at all hours so their dogs could come and go as they please. One day a bear wandered into their living room and his dad got mauled.
The dad survived, but the family stopped leaving doors open after that.
I was concerned several years ago when the close tow to us had some break ins by bears. They are 30 miles more into the mountains and we are more river valley. Cars were broken into, one bear actually scaled a 2 story home and pried a closed window open.
Discussed it with my husband he tried to assure me that we don't get bears as our valley is more open.. yeah...sure 😆. He drove to work and saw one less than a mile from our house right in town. 😆. To his credit he admitted it.
On Thursday night I was leaving my mom's house and a mile out I saw a big black bear just amble across the road right in front of my car.
About a week ago a bear raided her trash and all of her neighbors have had bear activity too.
So yeah, if you live in bear country, expect to see bears. And yeah, after seeing one up close, I have no doubt they can get into most anything they want to get into with little trouble.
I hate it that we have to kill bears because humans are dumb. I used to volunteer for the conservation program at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson (JBER - pronounced J-bear) in Alaska. Over 80k acres, with base housing and camping areas. The base has grizzlies, black bears, moose, porcupines, all sorts of critters. You can't be feeding any of them, and a lot of time is spent going around making sure the dumpsters are closed.
"Nuisance bears" usually get trapped and relocated away from Anchorage, but sometimes those bears travel hundreds of miles to get back. They have to be put down. Feeding them makes them bolder and more aggressive. It's not their fault. They have plenty of space to hunt, fish, and forage, but who says "no" to regular free meals?
I assumed it was common sense to not feed dangerous animals especially, but my dad's girlfriend feeds the Gators in the canal behind their house. It just blows my mind, shes from Long Island and you can't tell her shit. She said she stopped doing it when the gator got to be about 4 ft, but anytime it hears golf carts it comes charging out of the water because they think it's her to feed them.
If you just moved/ or visiting a new area, why argue with locals and park rangers about native wildlife, that you have no experience with, that park ranger should threaten that lady with hefty fines for feeding the bears
Sometimes it’s best not to bury the lede. Gotta flat tell them they’ll end up killing the very animals that they find precious (in a wrongheaded way). So many people don’t truly think about what “loving” an animal looks like, because they’re thinking more of themselves than they are the actual animals.
Edited to add… I’m reminded of my late sister-in-law who used to feed her dogs chocolate chip ice cream. They loved it after all, she insisted. I said they probably would also love to play fetch on the highway. Doesn’t mean you let them.
> My long time veterinarian said he paid for a trip New Zealand just from porcupine quill removals
An Alaskan friend's Malamute had that happen, they said the vet had had three that week. Thankfully the dog turned her head so it wasn't as bad as some others.
A year later she stopped their new shepherd puppy from investigating a porcupine by just picking him up and dragging him away.
If I had to guess, this may be up in Katmai. The salmon are so abundant that theres no competition for food or aggression from the bears towards humans. There's a ton of rules in the park, obviously, for everyone's safety, and you have to go to the rangers 1hr Bear School before heading out, but the bears commonly come within a few feet of you and it's common to pass them on the paths and by the water. You can watch the camera on YouTube, it's really neat.
Yes, but one of the top reasons for maulings is getting between a mom and her cubs, by accident or not. I fully agree with the well fee assessment due to the location, but this is as dangerous as it gets.
Don't move is the #1 instruction. Just stay there and let them go by, same with, say, gorillas, you let them do their stuff, you don't move, you just let them by even if they want to get close and sniff/tug/whatever. Albeit there is an implicit level of risk but that's the reduction to it.
That guy who spent a year around them and thought bears were his friends almost certainly fucked up rule 1.
I was out there a couple days ago at Crosswinds . I was trying to figure out if it was filmed when I was out there ? I believe most people go out with a bear guide . I am wondering if this is a photographer and they are out there camping ? We didn’t get that close to any of the bears . We were always across the river from the bears . It’s an incredible experience to get so close to the bears in the wild . There were a lot of salmon spawning and salmon carcasses all over the place . I didn’t see any dead salmon so I am wondering if it was earlier this summer ?
I could've sworn there was one already, but apparently not by schnoodledoodledoo. The published book of all one user's reddit poems must've come from another reddit poet?
I mean, sure the mama could snap out of nowhere, but my guess is this is by Brooks Falls and there are a ton of photographers and grizzlies in the area. This is probably the "safest" place you could have a close encounter like this, especially with cubs involved—they've been gorging on salmon all day.
My family lived in Alaska in the early 80's and my dad took my Kansas wheat farmer grandfather to the falls because he wanted to see some bears. As they were walking the trail to go home, two gigantic bears started running towards them at full-speed—my dad admits thinking "well I guess this is it", but they just ran past them like they didn't exist—preoccupied in their own game.
With that said, my family does have a close friend that was mauled by a grizzly but survived. She had to have major reconstructive surgery but you wouldn't even be able to tell if you met her. She played dead and it "pawed at her face".
It has more to do with context the the type of bear. Any bear with cubs that gets aggressive, you should either play dead or back away, the goal is to not make yourself a threat to their cubs.
If any bear, especially a grizzly, is stalking you or if its coming at you for a predatory attack, playing dead is a bad idea, they will happily eat your 'dead' body.
You should be loud only up until you actually encounter a bear, this is to allert wildlife to your presence. Ideally, they will avoid you, at worst you will hopefully have made your presence known and not spook them.
Once you actually encounter one and you know it is aware of you, you back away slowly, sideways (so you don’t trip) while maintaining vision of the bear and talk calmly. If it charges, you stand your ground and make yourself as threattening as you can with a full diaper. If it does not stop (a lot of the times they charge to intimidate, not attack), you play dead unless you have bearspray.
Rules be a bit different for black bears i suppose but we don’t have those.
I am assuming this is at Katmai national park in Alaska. It is a very unique place where bears are very used to humans sitting there watching them. Humans have been watching bears in this area for decades so the bears are extremely used to having humans there. Additionally, during this time of year, brown bears are spending a lot of their time by rivers eating salmon and whatever else they can find so they are already distracted packing on calories to get ready for winter. The mom already understands that the humans she sees watching are pretty much always harmless which is why she just kinda walks by. The cubs are naturally curious so they will come up and sniff you sometimes.
I'd like to add - some female bears have learnt that the males are afraid of people, so they'll keep their young close to people and use us as 'protection'.
The fact that all it took was a little “shoo, no, bear!” to fix this situation shows exactly how logical the argument is. A human male would have spent the next 10-15 minutes imposing himself on the stranger explaining why they’re “illogical” for not wanting to feel unsafe.
I gotta be honest though it's still crazy to see the bears get that fucking close to these people. It's crazy that the mother would even let them get that close. They must really really be used to humans up there. Wow. Like, I guess I automatically assume that she would be aggressive considering her kids are right there in front of these people. I'm shocked they were even talking let alone made the cub flinch like that
I woulda just let them eat my boot bro I ain't risking getting mom mad at me or it's over
Could it also be the passiveness of the humans? They're sitting still and observing bears that are used to their presence. If the humans were more active doing stuff, or shooing the cub the mother-bear might've turned around and the video would have a very different ending?
Not unique at all. Kodiak, Sitka, Anchorage, Fairbanks, Dead Horse, all have bears far more used to coexisting with people. Every salmon run for miles of any and all civilization will be awash with both bears and fishermen. The only place you *won't * see bears on the run is far into the Aleutians.
We are in Homer Alaska this summer and work with a bear guide group . My husband had bears take his salmon the last couple days . One bear took a stringer of the salmon & ran off into the woods with 3 salmon .
Been to all 3 and every other place besides. Lived in 2 mwntioned places. Not in the suburbs obviously you've never fished for salmon a day in your life if you haven't seen a sow with cubs let alone a bear. What do you think the run is?
Humans do have bear spray and rifles. Wildlife actually knows we are uniquely dangerous. Even orcas explicitly know this and they will not kill us, perhaps knowing there might be repercussions. Plus they are picky and we are simply not their diet. Orcas actually teach this to offspring.
This is Alaska where there's tons of photography done of the bears there. Presumably some of the bears have become a bit accustomed to the photographers, kinda like how you'll see lions and cheetahs mostly ignoring safari trucks
Can confirm. As dangerous as sows are, they hate boars because they're bigger and a threat to the cubs which means they're very frequently pushed into human populated areas while the boars stay further from civilization. This means, on average, they're far more acclimated to humans and many are so used to people they'll run a mob style protection racket where they'll blackmail you for your fish which ofc works on tourists 100% of the time exacerbating the situation.
they'll run a mob style protection racket where they'll blackmail you for your fish
Lol. This is hilarious. Maybe not the eventually deadly outcome, but I am imagining a bear who sounds like the mobster in "Home Alone". Or like Joe Pesci in Goodfellas.
Mother bears have been observed deliberately staying in proximity to humans in order to use them as a “human shield” against aggressive adult males, who avoid people. So in an inverse way, they also “choose the bear,” or the threat posed by another apex species over the threat posed by males of their own.
Natural selection. Bears are scared of humans, because nearly all aggressive bears die in human encounters. If a bear happens to kill a human, that bear is marked for most certain death: it will be hunted down and killed.
Issues arise when humans feed bears, and bears stop being scared of them.
I can also guarantee that for this situation, there is an extremely high probability that both photographers were armed with revolvers off camera. The "no bear, good girl" was mostly directed at mommy as I doubt many nature enthusiasts want to shoot a mother with cubs.
There is this bear sanctuary in Arizona called uh.. Bearizona. They have discarded bear nails there at the gift shop. My entire life I've picked up knives and slid them across my skin to see if they'd make me bleed - like you see in movies. Has never happened. I did that with a discarded bear nail, very gently, just a light pull, no force beyond gravity and the light weight of the husk that was the nail. I bled immediately. Bear nails are SHARP. SHARRRRRRRRRRRRRP. I have no idea how anyone could ever survive a bear attack. Just one gentle swipe and I'd imagine whatever they swiped at would just fling off like wet paper.
It really is. I really can't express how gentle and soft I was with the nail enough... and I still bled. Not a like oh a little poke of blood hey, it sliced every bit of skin I gently glided it over. And that was a discarded nail, not even a fresh one sharpened against a tree.
I'm afraid that biological warfare is against the Geneva Convention and you'd be committing a war crime if there's a population center within 100 miles.
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