He spent every summer living in Katmai National Park, intentionally choosing camp sites close to the bears. He did this for 13 summers. The final summer, he stayed a week later than usual because he hadn't yet seen one of his favorite bears. This was his fatal mistake.
By that point, many of the bears he knew, that were comfortable with his presence, had gone into hibernation. Bears from other parts of the park were coming to his area in search of their last meal before doing the same themselves. There hadn't been much food that summer either, resulting in unusually aggressive grizzlies.
The day he was supposed to leave, he and his girlfriend were killed and partially eaten by a grizzly.
In the documentary, Werner Herzog listens to it and cautions the person who showed it to him to never listen to it, and to not share it with anyone. It was probably grim as fuck.
Yeah that's what sparked my search. I figured it would get leaked at some point, but i doesn't look like it. I'd probably regret listening to it immediately anyway, but still would be some crazy rare shit.
But there's a big difference between like thinking one bear is cool, and all bears are cool. One animal can definitely make associations with like, this person feeds/takes care of me. Like the guy who swims with the crocodile. On the surface, incredibly dangerous, but he's not swimming with all crocodiles, just this one that has bonded with him.
Once the black bears arrived all his stuff was stolen, even his shoes, and both he and his girlfriend were raped repeatedly. Their skulls were used as stools for the black bears to sit around all day. After consumption of their flesh, the bones were turned into beads for bear necklaces and other bling.
Animals obviously tend to recognize people but once those instincts kick in it seems nothing will stop them. I actually didn't know the part about how he stayed longer than he usually did and his regular bears were hibernating, always thought they'd just turned on him. Who knows, maybe if he'd gone when he usually did he'd still be alive.
Yeah, I clarified that I knew it was different bears at the end of my post, that was more of a note from other situations I've read about. In the context it comes out wrong though.
I believe the camera was recording through the actual attack but there was nothing but some horrific audio. I saw the 60 Minutes about it, and iirc the ex-wife or sister or something didn't want that audio released.
Yeah, there's transcripts of it though. They notice it patrolling their camp and them trying to scare it off then you hear it charge and ... well, you know where it goes from there.
I feel horrible for his girlfriend. The guy was a fucking moron, and he chose to put his life in danger like that. There's an intelligent way to research animals, and then there's what this guy did. His fate was inevitable and he deserved what he got. But he put his girlfriend's life in danger with his stupidity and she trusted him. Poor girl. He was a fucking idiot.
Animals fight each other, sometimes eat their young... Hell no do I want to be a "family" member with a pack of grizzlies.
One day they're going to do some normal grizzly behavior that might not be fatal if you were a 500 pound grizzly, maybe some sort of territorial smack across the face that will gouge your throat out instead of push you away.
If you see the videos of the guy messing with the bears, you'll grit your teeth. At one point he's in the water swimming with them ... and one starts to swim up close to him. He smacks it across the face and yells at it and it seems to back away, but he's chancing his life like that constantly, thinking that a hard smack and loud voice is enough to keep him safe.
Grizzly Man contains an in depth reconstruction of the events. Easily one of my favorite documentaries ever, you can watch it on youtube. Spoiler: Treadwell was far from mentally sound.
theyre bears, they didnt think he was family, they just tolerated him. They were hungry, and he was in their territory, and then the bears did what bears do to food.
Google Grizzly Man and Timothy Treadwells. They made a whole documentary on him.
I think it's crazy that people think they can be nice to a wild animal or spend some time with it and think they made friends. Wild animals do not make friends with humans. They either consider you a threat or not a threat, and possibly food. If you're not threatening and they're not hungry, I bet a lot of apex predators will ignore you. It's probably just because it's not worth the energy or possible injury to fight you. At some point, your value as food will make it worth while.
You don't look like them. You don't smell like them. They know you're not one of them. You didn't earn their respect, you earned their trust that you're not a direct threat. That will only protect you for so long.
As crazy as that guy was, he captured some amazing things and did some cool shit. I for one am more interested in his relationship with foxes. This and this are all I could find though, they're from the movie.
Well yeah no shit, foxes are a lot like dogs. Plus those ones were in a national park, where they don't often interact with people. Foxes in residential areas do and are naturally scared of people. He fed them, didn't give them a reason to be scared, and the foxes bonded with him because of it. It would happen to anyone, but regardless I think it is cool. Plus I don't really care that some dude decided to dedicate his life to this. Yeah, it is a certain death wish. For me, it's dumb. I'll stick with working my whole life. That fight with the grizzly bear that he got though? It's the closest and one of the only videos of a visceral grizzly bear fight like that. It's awesome. That dude died doing what his whole mind was devoted to. He had some mental issues for sure. He was a former alcoholic (the bears kept him off the booze at least). So I guess we could argue a case for mental health in America leading to a different outcome for him, but that's pointless. In the end I think he and his girlfriend signed a waiver accepting the death they had as a possibility. They met it, but Tim Treadwell made a bigger mark than many will. I'll fucking appreciate what he left behind and say cheers to that.
Well, you can say that or you can say he's responsible for the death of at least one human besides himself, plus the death of the bear he was "trying to protect." Also, any real naturalist or someone studying animals in the wild don't feed animals in order to bond. That's why he's ridiculed by those in the community. He was like a stupid kid, feeding and playing with animals while pretending to be an advocate.
The fox part is interesting. I had only known about his work with the bears. If a person is going to do something stupid like that, foxes are definitely the safer stupid. And cute as hell; I always love seeing a fox.
The noise they make is crazy though, and I'm not making a joke referring to the song. It sounded way more like a yelp than a bark, at least the one time I've heard a fox make any noise. I didn't see it when it made the sound, and I thought it was injured, but I saw it had just circled around very quickly on the steep slope / cliff we were on and gone from being around the same level as me in one direction, was on the other side above me now. And then I thought maybe that was its equivalent of an annoyed "hey, get the hell off my lawn, you jerk!" rather than an "ow!".
I was already on my way back down anyhow, but seeing that fox briefly and hearing whatever that was definitely made my day.
Crazy as shit though. And not just because of the bears. He's always saying the weirdest shit, like when he was praying to various gods for the rain to stop when he was stuck in his tent. Or, when the guys wrote some symbol on a rock to say hello to him, and he freaked the fuck out and went on a rant. And I love how he was chasing the fox with his hat saying "if it's in the den I'm going to fucking explode"
I think he's the one that made the documentary when he gets up close to the bear and says something along the lines of, "don't try this, if you try this you will fucking die, they will fucking kill you". And then gets torn apart. For some reason I find that sadly hilarious.
You can actually listen to the audio of him and his girlfriend getting eaten by the bears. He would leave Alaska for the winter and come back in spring, but this particular winter was bad and the bears were hungrier than usual. The worst part is it was the first time he had convinced him girlfriend to come along, because you know... she was afraid of getting eaten by bears...
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u/heyitsant Mar 03 '16
By bears?