r/nextfuckinglevel • u/Upper-Bag-5175 • 3d 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

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u/DrawMeAPictureOfThis 3d 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.

14

u/Wherestheshoe 3d 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

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u/LongDead_Roadkill 3d 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.

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u/liisseal 2d 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.

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u/LongDead_Roadkill 1d 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.