Bear kept 3-year-old boy safe.
The article cites two other instances, one in 1888 and the other in 1955, where 2-year-olds were kept warm/were fed by by bears.
If true, I wonder what was going on. Bear lost her cub, found a child instead?
Wouldn’t the bear be hibernating at this time of year?
Note: boy says bear kept him safe. Kids make up stuff all the time. Did anyone go looking for fresh bear tracks, etc.?
That’s what I thought, but the earlier reports (follow the link in the article) indicate that those bears were not hibernating. ‘The mother of the girl frantically claimed that she had seen a bear carry off her child into the forest, and that it had been “cradling” the girl as it had run off,’ and ‘She claimed that this Mr. Wolf had eaten her hat, taken her shoes, and had refused to let her leave under any circumstances, although he had also provided her with berries to eat. It is unclear whether this was a bear, a wolf, or something else…’
Yes, that is true.
It ensures a fresh, warm meal for later in the winter.
I’m sure we’ve all seen YouTube videos of very disparate animals caring for one another. It astounds me seeing some of these caring creatures just getting along.
A little girl wouldn’t feel like a threat to a bear, so I’m not surprised.
I guess the mother is claiming the bear was holding the child in one paw while it ran off on the other three legs? Is that even physically possible for a bear?
Maybe it was Bigfoot. What? It could happen.
Or, just a big friendly gay guy.
Bears do not technically hibernate; they enter a state of extreme torpor, but not so low that they cannot quickly awaken and act defensively or even forage for food. When they enter this state it is referring to as “denning”; in climates where temperatures rarely drop below freezing and plants may fruit year round, bears may den only for a few weeks or not at all.
I’m not sure even that would be conclusive. Bears, and particularly black bears, are not as aggressive as generally portrayed and it is just possible that a bear might have actively protected a child that it viewed as an oddly-furred young cub, but it is just as likely the boy found a bear den of some kind, crawled in, and was inspected by a curious sow who then just left it alone. Bears are very curious animals but generally very retiring unless habituated to human presence (e.g. by being lured by food or waste), and a three year old child is scarcely capable of being a reliable witness at the best of times.
Stranger
It sounds like we have only the family’s claim the the child has even made mention of a protective bear. I don’t know what happened out there. A bear could truly have saved the boys life. Stranger things have happened. I wouldn’t bet money on it though. On the other hand, if significant evidence is presented to indicate the bear story is a fabrication of the parents (possibly to gain notoriety and goose their GO-FUNDME page), well, stranger things have happened.
The first place I saw the story noted that the kid “is a fan of an animated TV show called Masha and the Bear, in which a young girl lives in the forest and has a guardian bear who watches over her.”
Which doesn’t prove that the kid made it up, or hallucinated it, but it does show where he might’ve gotten the idea.
Sounds more like a dingo.
I remember a documentary from the 1960s about just such an event.
I would be concerned the child was subjected to intensive psychological manipulation, turning him fervently sympathetic to the bears’ anti-monkey agenda. Just watch, in ten years the boy will be leading small groups of his peers into the woods where they will be ambushed and eaten by militant bears. No good can come of this.
Well, Mowgli was raised by caring jungle creatures, so I don’t know what y’all are so skeptical about. :dubious:
The place where the boy was found was not conducive to bear tracks. I read that the rescuers had to wade through some fairly deep water to get to him.
Holy moly! Water bears!
I think it’s great the kid survived. And for all the adultsplaining going on and comments on unreliable 3 year olds, is it really so outlandish the kid ferreals stirred up a mama bear’s maternal instincts and got some snuggles?