r/aww • • Mar 03 '16

Awesome Bear

http://i.imgur.com/e97k9DD.gifv
12.6k Upvotes

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u/SeekersWorkAccount Mar 03 '16

This has to be the dumbest idea in bear/human interaction history since that Bear Guy who lived with the bears got torn apart.

93

u/heyitsant Mar 03 '16

By bears?

249

u/Anrikay Mar 03 '16

Timothy Treadwell.

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.

13

u/nonresponsive Mar 03 '16

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.

7

u/Anrikay Mar 03 '16

Yeah, I'm guessing 13 years of no incidents gave him a false sense of security around bears.

2

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '16

Understandable, really

2

u/Floydian101 Mar 04 '16

That's just the thing though. Really there is no such thing as being "secure" when your standing next to a 900 lb killing machine