Here is a photo taken at one of our worksites. We have others of polar bears peering in the windows.
Yanna bet?
How did they get down? Were they really able to back down the ladder? Shoot I have trouble doing that…
I won’t link to it, but a quick internet search will find it easily…
There is a video of what happened when a young woman got too close to a polar bear’s cage at a zoo.
It’s not particularly gory, and she survived intact, but you’ll see that they aren’t so cute close up!
Cases where the American Black Bear (Ursus americanus) have attacked a person without provocation are extremely rare; much rarer, say, than dog attacks, and certainly less likely than an attack by another person. They certainly have the strength to do great harm or kill, but often don’t seem congnizant of that fact; I chased down one bear that decided to make off with my pack after I unwisely placed a peanut butter-and-honey sandwich in the top compartment then left it on a table in a backcountry campground frequented (I learned later) by foraging bears; the bear was convinced to retreat from the pack by yells and thrown sticks, and made no attempt to confront or pursue me once I’d collected the pack. On other occasions, I’ve come across (though never between) mothers and cubs, and the event has uniformed resulted in the mother yelling at the cubs to climb, and then herself climbing a tree and moaning at me until I go away.
The brown/grizzly/Kodiak bear (Ursus horribilis and subspecies) is more predatory (though still omnivorous verging on vegetarian for most of the year), but again, not typically toward people. In most attacks the bear is caught unaware or is defending a food stash. Brown bears, unlike black bears, do exhibit aggressive protectiveness toward cubs, but it would be unlikely that a mother would let small cubs out of sight long enough for a person to unintentionally come in-between.
Polar bears (Ursus maritimus) is a different story. While they are not as unremittingly fearsome as their common reputation would have you believe, they (unlike the other bear species of North America) have never had natural predators and thus have no natural fear of being attacked. Whereas black bears, and to a lesser extent, brown bers, are primarily foragers and opportunistic hunter/scavengers who had to be on the lookout for larger, more aggressive predators, the polar bear is the undisputed king of its domain. Owing to the environment it lives in, it also has a much greater demand for protein and especially fats, rendering a desperate bear more likely to engage in wanton predation on any available food source, including humans. They also seem to be the least social off all ursine species; while bears are generally non-social (save females with their offspring, especially daughters to whom they will “deed” territory) they will tolerate and to an extend even cooperate with other bears to exploit an expansive food resource. Polar bears are rarely seen in the company of other mature bears and I don’t know of any instance of them sharing a food source.
Would a polar bear killy you on the spot? I’d say it depends on how hungry he was. I certainly wouldn’t want to put money against the lethal outcome, but that shouldn’t be taken as an endorsement of the notion that bears are stupid, brutish, unremittingly vicious predators, but rather that it is an animal that lives in a harsh environment in which passing up a hot meal (especially one so nicely wrapped up in Cordura and Polartec) could result in starvation.
In any case, petting a bear–even a socialized black bear–is inadvisable. Unlike social animals (dogs, cats) bears do not engage in social grooming, and petting is likely to be regarded as an aggressive act. Not that you should ever aspire to make physical contact with a large wild animal outside of professional guidance, but should you find yourself in proximity to a bear your best move is to let the bear decide whether and how to approach. Most people who are “attacked” by black bears, for instance, are swatted because they’ve baited the bear to within reach and then do something to make the bear nervous (extend food and then jerk it away, attempt to pet the bear, et cetera), and the bear responds with a pre-emptive attack in order to make space to break contact. Better (for everyone involved) that you do not create a situation where the bear feels unduly threatened or cornered to begin with; although bears look kind of like large dogs, their behavior and responses are very different, and while they can be approached and even contacted with relative safety by someone who is trained to recognize their behavioral cues, an unexperienced person should never lure or approach a bear, or any other wild animal.
Stranger
A polar bear will eat you. And then have a Coke.
SOME polar bears are very friendly, and even welcome a swim with you. The Jacksonport Polar Bears, for example.
Er, that should be Ursus arctos; Ursus arctos horribilis is the grizzly subspecies of brown bear predominant in North America.
Stranger
[Nitpick]enipla , you mean Division of Wildlife, don’t you?[/nitpick] 
A couple of years ago, when we had drought conditions here in Grand Junction, we had a lot of black bears coming down from the High Country looking for food. Mostly they just robbed the local orchards, but one of them ate a llama on a ranch (in town).
I had seen one when I still lived in Durango during a wildfire. It crossed the road directly in front of my car (Plymouth Sundance). It’s back was just taller than the hood! I sure wouldn’t want to scrap with something like that, let alone something 5 times bigger and way more aggressive!
Polar bears + humans = bad idea.
I agree with most of this, although the circumstance in your last sentence happens often here. In fact, as recently as in the past week or two.
Speaking of rare occurances (does that have two 'r’s?), a woman was attacked and bitten by a young wolf last week up near the Arctic Circle. Only 13 documented cases in 30 years.
Just out of curiousity is there any wild animal that’s likely to let a person walk up to it and pet it? It seems pretty likely to me that any animal is going to be thinking either “Here comes lunch - I’ll eat the hand first to see how it tastes” or “BIG ANIMAL COMING AT ME!!! TRYING TO CATCH ME WITH ITS HAND!!! IT WANTS TO EAT ME!!! RUN AWAY!!!”
I had a marmot that tried to sleep with me up in Yosemite on my recent trip. I couldn’t scare him off nohow. (I wish I could figure out that trick with the women.)
“Wild” burros seem to be pretty accomodating, but then, the one’s I’ve seen seem to thrive off of the attention they receive from tourists. Ditto for mule deer near popular areas. And I’ve had bighorn sheep–notorious for their reclusiveness–investigate within 10 feet of me. I’ve also had the pleasure of playing with both octopuses and sea lions under water, though the latter don’t like to be touched even though they’ll swim up right next to you. So yeah, some wild animals–both terrestrial and marine–aren’t adverse to contact with humans.
Stranger
Ah, the rare spotted polar bear. I’ll be sure to keep far away from them!
I think not under most conditions, but under unusual circumstances, possibly. My three data points:
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I have photos of my then-girlfriend feeding three young rhinos (under the supervision of staff) at a facility near Lake Kariba in Zimbabwe; they would happily accept food but would aggressively charge anyone there (including me :eek: ) who was not actually there to feed them. A small group of tourists got themselves knocked over and scattered like ninepins when one of the rhinos decided they’d approached too close; fortunately there were no major injuries.
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While touring locally flooded areas just after Hurricane Floyd struck eastern Pennsylvania in 2001, I was able to approach to within a foot or so of several wild ducks that were floating in an eddy of a creek that had overflowed its banks. I’ve never seen wild ducks let a person approach that close under normal conditions.
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A couple of summers ago I was sitting on the patio of my mother’s place in PA, watching the night fall, when I heard a snuffling noise below me and looked down to see a skunk nosing around between my feet. Sorry, didn’t try to pet it, but it certainly didn’t seem to much care that I was sitting there, and gave no signs that it felt threatened in any way. For my part, I just sat quietly until it headed off to forage elsewhere in the yard.
Sometimes the rabid ones aren’t afraid of people.
Or squirrels. If squirrels live in a park or near a home where they are often fed by people they will lose their fear of being eaten by the big “predator” and come right up to them. Petting may not be allowed but they will sometimes touch the human. My mother had a squirrel she often fed at her home. He would often come to the window or the front door and wait for her. Once he got so tried of waiting he even knocked on the door. Seriously, she heard this tiny knocking sound, opened the door and there he was on the porch looking at her as if to say “Where the hell are my peanuts!”.
But I doubt this would work with polar bears.
I point out to kids that other bears are at least somewhat keyed in to looking for berries, honey, and fish, but polar bears are “all hunting all the time”, and as noted above, sometimes catching some impressively sized animals.
One of the stories I heard (I can’t find a cite in 5 Google pages) was that some kids tried to pet the polar bears on a dare, in one of the outdoor NYC zoos. All that was found was some clothing scraps.
Birds flying around freely at the zoo are probably used to being fed chips and popcorn: dulls the old wariness and reflexes, I’d imagine.
A story pretty similar to that one is available here - click on “polar bear and sled dog story”. Cute pictures!
On the Svalbard archipelago, anyone venturing outside the settlements is required to carry a rifle to scare away polar bears. (Don’t shoot them, you’ll just make them mad.) The school and daycare in the Norwegian settlement of Longyearbyen is surrounded by a polar-bear-proof fence, although from what I understand the fence is at least as much to keep little kids from wandering out into the dark Arctic winters as it to keep bears from helping themselves to kiddie nuggets. The bears generally stay away from the towns.
Still, they have eaten people. Not often, but it happens - all the cases I remember were tourists outside organized groups.
I’ll provide the link , its a girl wearing a baby seal hat on her head. It is a safe for work link, and is pretty funny.