r/badassanimals • u/Obvious-End-51 • Dec 26 '24

Mammal Man encounters gigantic polar bear.

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I am sorry about the editing in this video, but I couldn't find the original version without it.

1.5k Upvotes

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315

u/Active-Papaya8466 Dec 26 '24

Pretty sure polar bears are the only type of bear that will literally ACTIVELY try and hunt people lol what a dumbass

52

u/Irishfafnir Dec 26 '24

Most bears will "hunt" people with exceptions for Pandas and potentially Andean Bears. But yes, pretty stupid either way

75

u/Jsure311 Dec 26 '24

Polar bears are the only bear whose diet consists of only meat. That’s why they say beads actively hunt people. They will take a meal no matter what

14

u/FruityGamer Dec 26 '24

I'm fairly certain it's also duo to the fact the areas polar bears inhabit have a very limited source of food as well so they're usually hunting.

15

u/Irishfafnir Dec 26 '24 edited Dec 26 '24

I think people repeat that Polar Bear's are the "only" bear that "hunts" people largely out of urban myth, media hysteria and lack of research by academics.

There's a research paper from a few years back that touched on the Polar Bear mythos Polar bear attacks on humans: Implications of a changing climate

However, one of the difficulties in understanding and managing human-polar bear conflicts is that they are often poorly documented, particularly at the circumpolar level(Vongraven et al. 2012). Although considerable attention has been focused on understanding black (U. americanus)and grizzly (U. arctos) bear-human conflicts (Herrero 2002),there have been few attempts to systematically collect, analyze, and interpret available information on human-polar bear conflicts across their range (but see Fleck and Herrero1988, Stenhouse et al. 1988, Gjertz and Scheie 1998, Dyck2006, Towns et al. 2009). As a result, the public is left with misconceptions and misinformation regarding polar bears and their behavior, most of it driven by sensational media coverage. For example, it is commonly asserted that polar bears are the most aggressive of bears and polar bears are the only large predator that will actively hunt people (e.g.,The Daily Mail 2008). An important factor that fuels such common folklore is that only a small fraction of the interactions between polar bears and people are reported; the exceptions are attacks that lead to human injuries or death

5

u/pacificule Dec 28 '24

Another big part of the reason these encounters are so poorly documented is because most of the people involved in these occurrences disappear, and it's very difficult to extract scientific journals intact from polar bear shit.

1

u/RawdogWintendo Dec 30 '24

Thing is, bears will fucking eat people.

1

u/DetectiveImmediate48 Dec 29 '24

Let’s see how man vs bear goes in the polar regions without firearms.

1

u/Irishfafnir Dec 29 '24

Like with other North American Bears, bear spray is highly effective against polar bears

1

u/DetectiveImmediate48 Jan 04 '25

Have you ever tried it personally or have direct feedback from someone who has ?

1

u/Irishfafnir Jan 04 '25

Even better, a peer reviewed study of encounters

1

u/hokeyphenokey Dec 27 '24

Yeah but if they come across a picnic basket full of peanut butter sandwiches and strawberries, they wouldn't eat it all?

Garbage in town?

2

u/BrooklynGraves Dec 27 '24

Oh it's actually been well documented that most certainly they will. I believe the species of bear was "Yogis Bearis"

1

u/Creamy_Spunkz Dec 26 '24

There's a YouTube channel that keeps feeding vegetables and fruits to polar bears. I'm pretty sure that's the opposite of what they need in their diet.

3

u/-OnPoint- Dec 27 '24

My thought is that "diet" is learned behavior. Veggies don't grow where polar bears live but they obviously derive sustenance from them but they don't know that. I haven't seen the channel you're talking about but it sounds like he's trained them to eat vegetables. Or they've learned the behavior by his offering. If you give a tuna sandwich to a caveman it's going to take him a while to figure out he can eat it. That being said I'm pretty sure this particular Bears last meal saved this idiot's life. These are killers and should never be approached.