Are Big Bear and Little Bear in Boonie Bears cute? But feeding bears in the wild is really dangerous!

During holidays, many friends choose to get close to nature, but sometimes we forget to keep a reasonable distance from wild animals, which can lead to danger. For example, a man recently fed a brown bear in the wild and almost got into danger.

Image from Sichuan Observation

The media reporting on such incidents have repeatedly used an intriguing headline style, which roughly means "After feeding the Internet-famous wolf, we started feeding the bear again." Regarding the incident of tourists feeding wolves in Hoh Xil (please note that the subject of this incident should not be "wolves" but "tourists"), many people have an attitude of watching the fun and making trouble, and even speak ill of those who advise "not to feed". However, when feeding brown bears became a hot topic, the awareness of the crisis came late. At least on one thing, netizens have reached a consensus: bears are much more dangerous than wolves. So, how scary are bears, and what behaviors increase the risk of being attacked by bears? Let's talk about it in detail today.

Is there any hero who is afraid of bears?

Brown bears are one of the most dangerous large land animals. First of all, they are large in size. The larger the animal, the more destructive it is. An autopsy report showed that a victim attacked by a brown bear died of severe cervical curvature and deformation due to being hit on the head by the bear's paw. Brown bears are animals that weigh hundreds or even thousands of kilograms. Even without using their sharp teeth and claws, a casual slap from their brute force is enough to cause serious injury or even death.

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Secondly, as people's awareness of conservation increases, the number of wild animals, including bears, is increasing, and their distribution range is expanding, so the possibility of encounters with humans will naturally increase. Now that outdoor sports that get close to nature are becoming more and more popular, the possibility of "encountering" between humans and brown bears has been further increased. In particular, many tourists do not know much about animals, and when they encounter bears, they are "foolishly bold" to feed them and take pictures.

Brown bears are also one of the animals that have the highest frequency of conflicts with humans. Brown bears are considered the most dangerous animals on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. From 2014 to 2017, Qinghai Province provided compensation for 7,494 cases of property and personal damage caused by wild animals, of which 42% were caused by brown bears, and 14 cases of death and injury were related to brown bears. Worldwide, there were 664 recorded incidents of brown bear attacks on humans between 2000 and 2015, with a mortality rate of 14.3%.

Not only brown bears, but other bears are ranked high in the total number of carnivore attacks (there is one exception, the polar bear, which rarely attacks people because it is difficult for people to come into contact with it). Even the "friendship messenger" giant panda has a lot of records of injuring people in zoos. In short, when it comes to animals like bears, you must be careful, careful, and careful.

By the way, the bear species that attacks people the most is not the brown bear, but the sloth bear, a small bear that lives mainly in the Indian subcontinent. It will adopt a very aggressive counterattack strategy against its main predator, the tiger. Because tigers, which live on large animals, are very afraid of being injured and affecting their mobility, even if they can beat the sloth bear, they usually won't fight head-on. What's worse is that when the sloth bear sees a person, it will also take the initiative to rush up, which has caused many terrible deaths and injuries. After talking about the dangers of bears, let's talk about what factors increase the risk of bears attacking people.

Is the bear that stole the picnic cute? No!

Food attraction is the primary risk factor.

There is an animation called Yogi Bear produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions. The main character Yogi Bear is a habitual offender who steals tourists' picnics and has forgotten how to find food in the wild. This character is based on a real person. In several protected areas in the United States, such as Yellowstone National Park and Denhali National Park, many brown bears and American black bears were attracted by human food (including food from tourists and leftovers from garbage dumps). Bears rummaging through garbage dumps even became a scene in Yellowstone National Park.

Although bears rummaging through garbage dumps may seem quite interesting, the bloody lessons later taught people how dangerous and stupid it is to let bears associate humans with food. In the operating history of Yellowstone National Park from 1872 to 2018, there have been eight fatal bear attacks. One of them was because the bear had a "previous record" of stealing food from the camp, another was because the bear was foraging in the garbage dump not long ago, and another was because the bear got into the tent to steal food and ended up meeting a person.

Surveys conducted in the Sanjiangyuan region of my country found that food is also an important cause of human-bear conflicts. Brown bears often break into herders' houses to look for stored food, and dead livestock and kitchen waste also attract bears to residential areas. Similar incidents also occur from time to time in Xinjiang and Tibet. At the end of last year, two brown bears broke into the township government of Qimantag Township in Xinjiang (it is called a "township", but there are actually only two houses here, one is the central station of the nature reserve, and the other is the township government, both of which have been invaded by bears).

Although brown bears are omnivores, they generally do not regard humans as food. In Yellowstone National Park, there has only been one case of a brown bear killing someone for food. If a brown bear kills a person for other reasons, such as protecting food or being frightened, it may also eat human flesh, but this is different from intentionally killing someone for food.

Therefore, the good news is that as long as we do not provide food that attracts bears, the chances of bears approaching and attacking people will be greatly reduced. In 1970, Yellowstone National Park passed a Bear Management Program to strictly manage food and garbage to prevent bears from becoming interested in people and their habitats. In Qinghai, my country, there is a private wildlife protection organization called Snowland that has done a lot of bear prevention work for local herders, one of which is to strictly manage garbage to prevent bears from being lured into residential areas.

The little bear is cute, but the mother bear is super scary!

Interacting with bear cubs in the wild can also lead to fatal consequences. Mother bears with cubs are brave enough to face any potential threats to their cubs. If a mother bear feels threatened, the consequences are often very serious.

On May 19, 2024, at Signal Mountain in Wyoming, USA, tourist Shayne Patrick Burke accidentally startled a mother brown bear with cubs, and the bear pounced on him and attacked him.

Fortunately, Burke was smart enough to bring pepper spray to repel bears, and when the bear pounced on him, he remembered to protect his neck and other vital parts. He was also very lucky that the pepper spray was choked by the bear's bite and ran away. His cell phone had a signal, so he contacted his wife (who knew first aid and taught him to make a tourniquet with what she had on hand) and rescuers. If he had been a little less lucky, Mr. Burke might not have survived.

According to an article published in Scientific Reports (by the way, this is the paper with the most authors I have ever seen, with 60 people), 47% of brown bear attacks on people worldwide between 2000 and 2015 were committed by mother bears with cubs. Mother bears in the nursing period are very sensitive and will attack humans as a threat to their cubs. Mr. Burke mentioned at the beginning of this section is a typical example.

The little bears you encounter in the wild are so cute that it is easy to overlook how dangerous it is to approach them. On October 7, 2023, a tourist in Yushu, Qinghai, greeted a mother brown bear with cubs without any cover. Earlier, there was a video of a tourist feeding a little brown bear with laughter in the background. This confirms a contradiction mentioned above. As outdoor tourism becomes popular, more and more tourists who do not understand wild animals come into contact with bears, which increases the possibility of injuries.

To prevent problems before they happen, you can do this

The previous part mainly talks about "don't mess with bears". Now let's talk about some proactive preventive measures we can take.

According to research, another common factor in brown bear attacks around the world is "suddenness". In 20% of attacks, bears and humans encounter each other suddenly, causing the bear to be frightened. Generally speaking, bears are afraid of humans, but their attacks when frightened can also be fatal.

Therefore, a major idea of ​​anti-bear is to alert bears to the presence of people as early as possible to avoid unexpected encounters with bears. In places where bears are present, people should go out in groups as much as possible and make more noise so that bears can hear the human voices from a distance and avoid them. With more people, there are more "reconnaissance" eyes, making it easier to detect the presence of bears. More importantly, in the wild, do not leave the paths that tourists walk on to avoid "unexpected encounters" with bears.

Appropriate equipment is also a common method of bear protection. Burke's example proves that bear spray can save lives. One of the important tasks of the conservation organization mentioned above is to help herders protect their houses with barbed fences, electric fences and other equipment to prevent brown bears from entering the house and destroying things, thereby reducing conflicts between people and bears. However, brown bears are constantly trying to break through the defense line, and some bears even dig holes under the electric fences to get through. Wildlife protection work is always full of variables and requires flexible response.

Finally, there is a question that many people are interested in: is it okay to kill a bear to "eliminate harm to the people"? The answer is no, because bears are second-class protected animals in the country and are protected by law. Bears cannot be harmed unless their lives are threatened.

A paper on human-bear conflicts in Sanjiangyuan suggested that if a bear causes an unusually large amount of damage, it can be dealt with in a more "violent" way: using firecrackers and rubber bullets to scare it away, locking it up instead of releasing it into the wild, and in some extreme cases, such as when it threatens human life, it can be shot. The shooting work needs to be managed by formal protocols and carried out by professionals.

However, we still need to realize that bears are also part of biodiversity. The so-called "eliminating harm for the people" is, after all, a last resort. If people and brown bears do not have unnecessary contact, bears themselves do not have to become "harm". When dealing with nature, more often than not, we need to learn how to prevent problems before they happen. Why do we have to let conflicts escalate and fight to the death? Behaviors such as "feeding", "playing" and "cuddling" that bring risks to people and animals should really not occur again.

Planning and production

Author: Red Queen Popular Science Creator

Reviewer: Huang Chengming, Researcher at the Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Planning丨Ding Zong

Editor: Ding Zong

Proofread by Xu Lai and Lin Lin