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If not friend, why friend-shaped? :(
Too be fair, we can kill them too. I bet people kill more bears than bears kill people.
In 2023 hunters reported harvesting 1,616 black bears in Oregon – 680 during the spring season and 936 in the fall
https://myodfw.com/articles/2024-spring-bear-hunting-forecast
Oregon has not documented any fatal bear attacks.
https://www.kptv.com/2023/05/24/bear-attacks-la-grande-man-after-he-shoots-it-twice/
Looked it up fairly recently (cuz you know men got mad about bears or whatever) but don’t have source on me: Black bears cause about 1.2 human deaths per year across all of America.
That’s probably about right. Black bears don’t get into fights they don’t have to. I don’t know how many dozens of black bears I’ve been around, but the only problem I’ve ever had involved a cub. Even that was a communication issue! I was trying to get the hell out of there, the cub was moving towards me, and the sow didn’t like me moving in any direction lol
How did you handle it
Made myself as big as possible, had my .357 out just in case, and not as slowly as I meant to continued to walk backwards the way I had come. Once she stopped coming towards me I turned around and went back to where I knew a clearing was. I plopped my ass in the middle of the clearing just in case, and waited a while. Once the shadows moved enough I headed back up the path and got to my truck.
Takes them five years to finally kill that second human
The only stories I hear about black bear related deaths typically involve some kind of “Messing With Sasquatch” moment on a couple of cubs.
It’s kinda why I never got the whole would you rather thing. As a fairly big dude, I’d much prefer the bear over a man or a woman. The bear is more than likely just going to scamper off. Even decent people in bad situations are very dangerous creatures, and more than likely, I’m just going to have to take care of a complete stranger in the woods.
A black bear is more likely to scamper off. A brown bear is going to expect you to scamper off. As an avid backpacker, I’m not stoked about the plan to reintroduce brown bears to my state.
As an avid backpacker, I’m not stoked about the plan to reintroduce brown bears to my state.
I do a lot of hiking as well, and yes brown bears are definitely more of a pucker your b-hole scenario. But for the most part as long as you don’t sneak up on one accidentally or accidentally get between the bear and the cubs, they’re fairly harmless. Ya just gotta have something that makes some noise when you’re hiking, I have buddies that just strap a cow bell on their packs.
It would still be pretty rare for one to outright attack a full grown person, they are generally aware that peeps be dangerous.
The problem with that is then you don’t see all of the other wildlife that is fun to come across while in the wilderness. You won’t have any more random deer or racoon sightings, since everything will run from your bell. Obviously it’s better to be safer, but I’m generally pretty happy that we don’t have fearless apex predators in our forests. We have a few apex predators with the black bear, grey wolf, and cougar, but those are all very wary of humans, and generally not a threat like the brown bear would be.
That’s fair, though it doesn’t seem to bother the little critters like rabbits or racoons for some reason. But yeah, it’ll def make the deer scamper off.
No question. They’re regularly hunted.
Yeah, but we’re not cute, so it makes sense
Says you. Actually other animals think we naked apes are totally cute.
Awe! 😊
I found Snow White
Eh
But people LOOK like they can kill. They are no fuzzy and cuddly…
Tigers are fuzzy and cuddly, and they look like they can kill, with self-sharpening claws and big canine teeth.
We look like funny apes, and what makes us dangerous are all strange magics like sticks that spit rocks, mists of death and our capacity to summon and play with fire. Then we build giant nests of concrete and lights and clockwork machines.
Calm down there Mowgli
You obviously haven’t seen me.
Idk, we’re pretty cuddly
I understand why they kill us.
In addition to destroying their habitats for strip malls, we rope them into entirely too many of our rhetorical infighting arguments.
It must be unbearable for them.
I’m sorry, I never can resist poking the bear.
I can bearly stand these puns.
We also taunt them with solidified gelatine sweets.
At least we put them on pretty 3D animated carbonated beverage advertisements for Christmastime for a while, that must’ve felt really nice until you consider that humans are exploiting your cute and cuddly experience to increase shareholder revenue due to sales of an unnecessarily sugared beverage made with tropical fruit seeds
Feeling cute, might eviscerate later!
Can I pet that dog?
Only once.
I wish ancient humans had domesticated bears and bred them to be pet-sized
The best time to do this was 1000 years ago. The second best time is now!
On a less jokey note, pretty much every living mammal has been subjected to domestication attempts at some point in history. Bears, elephants, tigers, hippopotami, moose… More often than not, there’s some kind of inherent physiological reason why it doesn’t work.
Some animals don’t breed well in captivity (pandas, famously, but cheetahs are another classic case). Some can’t handle captivity at all - the few efforts at keeping Great Whites in captivity ended with the animals bludgeoning themselves to death on the walls of their enclosures. Others are consistently too aggressive to effectively tame (zebras, coyotes, chimps, elephants, and pythons are notable for all the historic instances domestication failed for these reasons). And some simply aren’t pleasant household companions - skunks, raccoons, and foxes are all notable for their powerful odors and their propensity to destroy the interiors of homes.
There’s some speculation as to whether cats ever were actually domesticated successfully, or whether we’ve simply chosen to ignore their feral habits as such.
Those speculators haven’t met the right cats. (Also, we’ve been living together for thousands of years and have bred some incredibly useless varieties, it’s a ridiculous claim.)
Well there are red pandas. I’ve always wanted to cuddle one
i read that Japan tried for a long time and lost many good people to it before giving up, long ago.
There’s a dog breed that looks like a little bear.
It wouldn’t be so bad if they could only cuddle you to death. Still not great, but better…
Dying of easily treatable disease because one can’t afford insulin or a healthy diet vs being loved to death? If only certain people had the choice. And I didn’t mean “loved” in the euphamistic sense.
Same thing with big cats:
A Jaguar or Leopard just looks and acts like a big house cat… but it can crush your skull with one bite and can drag your dead body 30 feet vertically up a tree.
Then why are house bears not a thing? Not fair.
They’re called raccoons and they put holes in your drywall.
Ah yes, Raccoon Willie demonstrates that very very well https://piped.video/watch?v=E5ODWQPhB_0
(One of my favorite vintage YouTube videos)
Any thoughts I ever had of getting a raccoon for a pet were just destroyed.
At least we get other domesticated Caniformia (the “dog-like” suborder), just no domesticated Ursidae (bear family) specifically.
Probably for the same reason that racoons make terrible pets. They’ll eat anything, and are very smart, so nothing in your pantry is safe.
Polar bears look closer to how a giant killing machine is supposed to look.
Well, they won’t kill you right away… They’ll toy with you for a while then kill you.
Worth it.
Tigers are fairly common household pets in places like India, since they very much are like cats and are glad to be a cuddle-bug for free food. However this is at the risk that the tiger will forget herself and maul you in a moment of playfulness or annoyed aggression. And once you’re dead, well, there’s one last meal you can offer before it’s back to life in the jungle.
This is not to say all tigers are amenable. Some are just assholes.
Same with bears, and people have lived alongside bears for eons, knowing full well that alliance only lasts until famine comes a’knocking once again. (Grim fact, – relevant considering famine in Palestine – enough famine will drive us social apes to turn on each other and go full cannibal, which is why it’s regarded as a major humanitarian crisis, and cruel to induce. It’s also why Bron killed all the known thieves in anticipation of the imminent siege.)
In the meantime, Grizzly Man lived with bears for ten years before getting killed by an unfamiliar one that was just a jerk.
Tigers are fairly common household pets in places like India
Are you sure this statement is true¿? I never heard about any story of anybody having a fucking tiger as a pet
Indian here. Tigers are not household pets, as keeping them is illegal. Hell, keeping a body part of a dead tiger requires a permit, and is only allowed under very rare circumstances. Tigers have better protections under Indian law than humans.
My evidence is anecdotal, such as videos of people lounging with a tiger in their living room. There’s also the weird thing in the…90s? Where driving around in a large car with a tiger was a dare-sport thing (which is why it appears as an activity in Saints Row: The Third )
I believe it’s not exactly legal to keep tigers or large cats as pets in industrialized parts of the world (at least not without proper holding cells) but there are huge parts of the world that are less industrialized and are not sufficiently policed to stop symbiotic social relationships between humans and wild animals.
On a similar thread, cheetahs are notoriously easy to domesticate, to the point that they’re a problem. If you go out to cheetah territory, say in Kenya, and feed one, it may decide you’re their buddy for life and follow you home. Unlike black bears in Montana or Wyoming that assault tourists for food when they learn that’s a source, it’s for the protection of the currently endangered cheetah population.
As for other large cats, I don’t know how often they companion up. Here in the states, we have mountain lions, but we also have ranger services to police both the lions and the tourists. I suspect in places like Nepal where there are human settlements removed enough from industry there also may be negotiations between leopards and humans with positive outcomes. But that is speculation. I haven’t seen videos of that.
ETA: Scanning news, apparently in 2024 there are a lot of tigers-as-pets in Texas of all places, which is a lot more contrived since it’s not adopting and befriending the beastie from the nearby jungle, but importing them in to be domesticated.
I have heard about wealthy people all over the world keeping big cats as pets but those are always kept in cages or their own enclosures. What seems wrong is you claiming that regular people are keeping tigers as pet. Infact people and tigers are more in conflict due to encroachment of humans into formerly forested areas.
Tigers also kill people way more often than bears.
Stats on this are hard to compare because black bears are responsible for 1.2 kills in the US per year and tigers are like 34 kills per year in India which does have like 4x the population of humans, but also there’s a LOT less tigers to do that killing [like 5,000 tigers to 400,000 black bears] So like… yeah.
Most of those 400k black bears will never see people though. They live in the wilds. Only a small percentage of bears come into contact with people, and they know they’re the boss.
Cats like to play rough. A housecat who does can hurt you. Imagine a full grown tiger who decides to play. I saw a trainer interview who said a 6 month tiger cub is absolutely lethal. I believe him.
I think it was the animal trainer for the Gladiator movie who said that you can turn your back on lions, and treat them like dogs, but you better never turn your back on one of the tigers, or you’re dead.
Tigers are not common household pets in India
The unfamiliar one wasn’t just a jerk, it was sick. He talks about how he’s pretty sure that bear was going to eat him if it stuck around, and sure enough, that bear ate him. You’d think he’d choose not to stick around since the bear was obviously contemplating a tasty meal, but nope. He not only stayed there, he brought his girlfriend along as a side dish.
Well, it’s fucked up for them that the bipedes made up of delicious meat have guns…
They won’t just kill you. They fuckin’ EAT you.
Seriously, polar bears are one of the few animals in the world that see humans as prey and a legitimate food source.
There are many animals that can kill you, very very few that will eat you.
Humanity: having an obesity epidemic
Polar Bears: “increased fat stores?? D E L I C I O U S”
Well you average American does have more blubber than an arctic seal.
I can see a really interesting plan here we can save the polar bears and reduce the pressure humans are putting on the planet. Win Win
We’re preparing for the Resource Wars
House cats will eat you if you die alone in a house with them.
That is why I always make sure they have extra food.
Honestly though they will lick your face right off. I wouldn’t suggest looking up pictures of this.
Oh, if you’re particular to the white ones, it’s the -40° that’ll kill you. Not the bear.
Yeah… the -40° and the opened abdomen
celsius or fahrenheit?
Yes
Both
I got another one:
The -40° acute angle of your neck
They’ll both kill ya, it’s just that the cold is more likely to get to you first if you’re unprepared. If you’re prepared then the bear will have a nice wrapped meal.
As the bodies on Mount Everest shows us, it’s easy to not be prepared for the levels of cold it can get in some places on earth such as the poles.
Fun trivia: In To Build A Fire which takes place in the Yukon, Jack London notes that it’s -70°
This is to say, the secret ending is that the dog didn’t make it (or did only by a miracle of probability).
My favorite poem ever about the cold is The Cremation Of Sam McGee.
There’s only one bear I would have as a pet…
Red panda.
From what I’ve heard they’re basically like a dog with opposable thumbs, which sounds like an awful pet.
