I saw on the news where a bear killed a small girl. The article also mentioned that the bear was later killed by the forest ranger. Whenever an animal kills a human being, the animal is normally killed, right? Why? Is it for revenge? Once an animal kills a human being, does the animal want to kill more human beings…are they afraid it will become a serial killer?
Whether the bear would have in fact formed a taste for humans is arguable, but that’s the reason always noted for the destruction of an animal, yeah.
Also, keep in mind that this shows the animal is neither afraid of humans, nor afraid of attacking them.
Even if the bear is just eating garbage, after a third or fourth offense of ‘invading’ territory that ‘belongs’ to humans, authorities will generally at least consider executing a bear which is of a non-endangered species. Sad but true…
There is a saying “A fed bear is a dead bear”. Once bears become used to humans, they lose their fear of us and start associating us with food. Since bears are an unpredictable and inquisative species, this means that if there are enough interactions eventually the bear will harm a human. It’s a pretty clear argument.
This re-enforces why it is so important to not feed bears, or leave food out where bears can find it and become trained to associate humans with food. Eventually, it will get the bear killed.
If the bear in question was in the Catskill mountains of New York, it didn’t kill a small girl. It ate a baby. A family was outside on their porch, with the baby daughter strapped into her stroller, and they saw the bear come around looking for food, and they ran inside, the mother hustled the older kids inside and then turned to grab the baby’s stroller and saw the bear loping off into the woods with the baby in its mouth.
If the bear’s not afraid to come in to their yard in front of them and eat their baby once, it’s not going to be afraid to come into a yard and eat a baby again, either.
What kind of an argument is that? :rolleyes:
Just because a bear may harm a person in the future is not a justification for killing it now. It’s like saying you have a chance of committing a crime in the future, so you should be locke up now.
Is the logic that the killing of the bear will send a message to other bears? Or is more of removing the threat of this particular bear forever? Personally, I don’t think they should kill the bear, because killing is what bears do.
In medieval law, if a person died by falling out of a wagon, then the wagon was convicted of a capital crime and given the “death penalty” by being broken up.
It’s not quite like that. For “may harm,” substitute “almost certainly will harm.” Also keep in mind, it’s a bear. The vast majority of humans value human life over ursine life.
The outcry over ignoring the virtual certainty of said bear maiming or killing someone would be enormous. If it were you or one of your loved ones who was harmed, I daresay you would be yelling the loudest.
The greatest asset a black bear has is its fear of humans. That is why there are a hell of a lot more black bears over a much greater territory in North America. The grizzly has no fear of humans, and as a result its habitat is severely restricted and its future is bleak.
I’ve had quite a few encounters with black bears in my life time, most particularly recently at a fish processing plant. These bears are so driven by their desire for easy food that they constantly get bolder and bolder, edging closer and closer to the human activity amongst their prey.
Every so often the staff shoot off “bear bombs” to ward them off. If they didn’t, these bears would soon demonstrate that they aren’t afraid anymore, and let the humans know it.
No one wants to see a bear shot. But a bear without fear of humans in the vicinity of humans will eventually attack a human. That is a near 100% certainty.
Not only do bears that have been fed by humans eventually learn to threaten humans, they also teach there offspring.Thus the cycle continues. Park rangers try their best to relocate bears that have become scavengers of human food,unfortunatly most of the bears find there way back to human habitats and eventually have to be destroyed. This is why you must never,ever feed a bear.
Yes, I know I made a typo in my post,but I’m assuming that the dopers who catch it are also the smart ones who don’t have to be told not to feed the bears.
Bear Kills Human-Humans kill bear
Human kills human-Human is sent away with hopes that it won’t happen again.
People are weird…
And that is why you must never, ever feed the humans.
Not precisely; the thing or equivalent value went to the king (or to the local lord, if the king had so granted), usually to be used for “pious works”. Not inconceivable that the king would order some object thus forfeited to be broken up, but I’d never seen an account of it and I caught an interest in this about a year ago (it was mentioned in a novel I was reading, Aubrey/Maturin, I think) and looked into it. If interested, google “deodand” for more details.
AmbushBug
[sub]pardon me while i go figure out how to apply a bear to pious works[/sub]
Perhaps to give the family a sense of closure.
It seems that all of you think they simply shot the bear and left him to rot in the forest. You all missed the reports that they not only killed the bear, but then tested it for rabies. My understanding is that the only sure way to know whether an animal has rabies or not is to examine its brain after death.
The goal, I beleive, was to find out why the bear attacked. Reports constantly mentioned how rare black bear attacks are – I think 40 in all of North America for the past century. So they want to know if this particular bear simply went crazy or if there might be another reason.
Sources for the above can be read at MS-NBC
It’s not always about revenge.
I don’t know anything about bears so my first thought was to test for rabies (or anything else). But since it looks like no one else said that…do bears not get rabies? Okay, so rethinking that I see that the OP states that the victim was killed so rabies isn’t really an issue, but what if it was just an attack and the victim is not killed, then is it an issue?