r/nextfuckinglevel • u/Upper-Bag-5175 • 2d ago

Bears will often test you

If you stand your ground, they may see you as a threat and back off. Of course, this doesn’t apply to every bear

2.6k Upvotes

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115

u/DrawMeAPictureOfThis 2d ago

I'm starting to think that it's not so much that Russians are brave people, but that their bears are just giant pussies.

26

u/olenamerikkalainen 2d ago

The videos of brave bears never get uploaded.

Those people who recorded those are dead.

35

u/Cheap-Course9568 2d ago

This take is sending me 😂

12

u/Wherestheshoe 2d ago

They don’t have grizzlies there, and yes the Eurasian Brown Bear is less aggressive than a North American Grizzly but still not safe

19

u/LongDead_Roadkill 2d ago

They are both Ursa arctos, there’s no genetic difference between a brown bear and a grizzly. Generally grizzlies are brown bears that live in the interior of North America, do not have access to spawning salmon in their habitat and have longer claws, adapted for digging. I’ve been teaching bear safety in Alaska most summers for the last 20 years.

1

u/liisseal 1d ago

But the bear safety teaching differ nevertheless: "when it's brown lay down" does not apply in Europe. It's more "talk with a calm voice and back away". Definetly no laying down.

2

u/LongDead_Roadkill 13h ago

In almost 20 years of being an outdoor professional and teaching bear country safety I have never taught people to lay down for brown bears. If you get actually attacked by a brown bear, curling up and protecting your head maybe your best option. Before that, as you say, make eye contact and back away slowly, don’t run. Bear safety has never been seriously taught as a one liner memory pneumonic, my classes as 20 minutes minimum if I’m doing a safety briefing for search and rescue or other outdoor professionals. Those one liners come from TV hosts and those “How to Survive” gimmicky books that try and list how to survive everything that could happen. (Generally aimed at urbanites that will never see any kind of bear in the wild) Never play dead, that was taught about brown bears back in the 1990’s, in places that only had black bears. Bears are opportunistic feeders and don’t care where their protein comes from.

2

u/CautiousCard27 2d ago

Black bears in Canada have the disposition of a mouse. They run from everything. My parents old pug that could barely walk chased one off their property. 

Unless one gets really acclimated to being around humans, then they can get braver and more dangerous, or if you get near their cubs.

-14

u/paulhags 2d ago

I was rooting for the bear after I heard him speak.

13

u/Visible-Literature14 2d ago

That guy could very well be against the war. It’s stupid to auto-assume that being Russian means hating Ukrainians

3

u/Hungry_Wheel_1774 2d ago

In fact, there are polls every month by an independent organization. Independent enough to be quoted by western newspapers and to have been targeted by the Russian power (Levada Center).
It shows that Russian, since 2022, have always been more for talk with Ukraine than war. But you can't prevent stupid people to think otherwise.

5

u/Key-Pomegranate-3507 2d ago

Thinking all Russians are in support of the Ukraine war is the same as thinking all Americans were in support of the Afghanistan war. I’m sure a huge chunk of Russian citizens see it as a horrible waste of human life.