When Black Bears Attack

Saturday, May 21st, 2011

Realistically, you won’t get eaten by a black bear:

But if you do, it’s likely to be young, male, and single.

Recently scientists studied the history of black bear attacks. For the most part, the news it good. Only 68 attacks have been documented in the last one hundred and nine years. Unfortunately, over 85 percent of them happened since the 1960s. And here’s the creepy part: they’re all sneak attacks.

Most people believe that the quickest way to get killed is to get between a mother bear and her cubs. That may well be true. It’s never really been tested, because no one is stupid enough to try it. Black bear mothers help people along in that respect by grunting, growling, stamping the ground, and generally making people want to wet themselves and run away. It’s an effective defense, for both the bear and the human.

Fatal black bear attacks occur when people don’t get the chance to get scared away. Over ninety percent of the fatalities have been when bears are hunting, not defending. Attacking bears are almost always young, male, and hunting their victims rather than scaring them. They tend to creep up on people, and then charge them in a surprise attack. Some male bears were sick or injured, which may be why they tried to creep up on slow-moving, foul-smelling humans rather than something tastier, but with the limited number of cases there was no way to be sure that the injury had caused the bear to attack.

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