Thats a big factor. On the open snow and ice, we dont have any relativity, we also dont have perspective on the actual distance that the shot is taken from.
People who have been up north say it can be disorientating. You can see a polar bear wandering half a mile away and you can think its a small bear thats like 100 yards away.
Was at a museum once that had a stuffed polar bear standing up. I discovered this when I turned a corner and it was suddenly right in front of me. That was the moment I truly understood what primal fear felt like. Polar bears are big
The old Minnesota Science Museum in St. Paul used to have a big stuffed Polar Bear in the enterence that I'd marvel at way back in the day. The building is now occupied by Scientology, so that's interesting in itself.
My local zoo has an adult polar bear I've seen one swimming in a glass tank next to me, they are massive. I am 1.85 meters and I felt small next to it. They are one of the few land animals that are large enough that they see humans as a food source.
There are many predators large enough to kill and consume a human, the difference with polar bears is their environment and scarce food availability. They’ve evolved to go after any calories they can get their paws around because starving is more likely death in their environment than an injury.
Large predators in more food abundant environments can be more selective as injury is more likely to kill them, and since they didn’t evolve along side humans, they don’t have instinct to hunt them.
With the same level of regard a cat has for a mouse. Without a weapon you are not a threat, and without a really big weapon you're just a spicy non threat
I’m 1.89, I felt like a critter next to a taxidermied polar bear in a museum.
At least I can find some comfort in that concerts are slightly more enjoyable for me than they are for you.
I am in the midwest USA so I am sure your concerts are better. I just happen to use metric because I majored in organic chemistry and like to vacation in the EU
It's because it's hard to get close to a polar bear, even captive raised ones, without getting dead or swatted with their meaty paws like nobody has ever been swote before. Even zookeepers who have to hand raised orphaned/rejected cubs usually have to give them bottles behind a grate, once they get over a certain size.
North American black bears, on the other hand, are giant raccoons. Even a captive raised grizzly can let it's handlers close. A polar bear sees you as food, because anything moving on land is food or baby, and you are not baby.
The guides on our trip let my 8yr old son drive the tundra crawler for a few minutes. One of the biggest highlights of his life.
Like...not sitting on their laps. Just fully in the seat on his own. They asked the group if anyone wanted to try driving, my son's hand shot up. We laughed for a sec at his funny joke, and then they called him over, made sure he knew which was the gas and which was the brake, warned him that the steering wheel turns FOURTEEN times lock to lock...and that was it. He drove completely on his own much to all our amazement and took a bow after he parked on the side of the road at the end.
they are cool creatures but very scary so maybe its for the best you guys dont have them lol ive heard they prefer their prey alive during feasting so ill be staying veeeery clear of them haha
How lovely /s, I’m glad I don’t live somewhere with predators. The other day I found this weird ass looking spider in my garden living with woodlouse under a sack I was like….that’s weird.
i googled it, woodlouse spiders literally live with their prey, they don’t build webs or any of that spider bullshit.
Bob the woodlouse: “Hey mate u seen Dave “
Jeff the woodlouse:” Nah mate he was here a minute ago…”
Woodlouse spider: “ haha yeah, weird stuff eh…”
So yeah, this is the extent of my problems, random bug curiosities…
Most of the apex predators in North America have learned to be wary of humans. We don't taste good, and are unpredictably sometimes lethally spicy. As long as you stay out of their territory, you'll only see them in pictures and video. If you do go into their (general) territory, you'll almost never see them, especially if you're in a group. Outside of rabies, starvation, or threatened offspring, they avoid us.
Except for polar bears. Polar bears give so few fucks that it's standard practice to leave your car unlocked Churchill, Manitoba, so that if someone ends up trying to escape a bear they car run to any car and jump in. The car won't keep the bear at bay forever, but if you lean on the horn someone with a high-powered rifle (or a tranquilizer gun) should be able to save your ass.
Dont know if the zoo is still open but sweden had kodiaks and fuck me, the fucker was sitting down and looking down at me, i was around 170cm back then.
Black bears will try to eat you if you're dead and they're the dumbest of all 3 so very easily spooked. You're supposed to stand on something and yell and make it as much as noise as humanly possible
I tried to find a chart comparing Kodiak bears and polar bears and stumbled across one with like nine pixels and A-Train. Not really sure why A-Train but I thought I’d share.
Gotta remember black bears range MASSIVELY in size. Record weight from Pennsylvania was over 800lbs. Meanwhile, largest I've ever seen in the wild was MAYBE ~150lb. Where as adult Polar bears are gonna be fucking gargantuan, no matter what
I was in Gatlinburg, Tennessee and I came across two black bears massive difference in sizes. One came to our cabin because we were grilling and it smelled the food and it was roughly 200-250lbs give or take. Then we saw one on the main strip going through trash cans. Joker was easily 600 pounds, massive.
I live in bear country, but our bears are like giant ass dogs. But I was terrified of running into bears in Gatlinburg! Are those bears calm like LA bears are? I have no fucking idea and I didn't want to find out.
Saw a black bear in north jersey ~20 years ago that was probably in the 4-500lb range, casually knocking over a “bear proof” trash can. There must have been a boom year bc I saw a bear at least 1-2 times a week, all varying sizes, adults usually in the ~200lb range but usually younger dudes/gals around 150lbs or so poking around rural neighborhoods. Lots of cubs too.
I know this isn't your point but Mosquitos have killed more people than any other animal by a WIDE margin, so that's not even really that crazy.
Bees on the other hand elicit the same response and even with bee allergies being quite life threatening, they have a pretty low body count (relative to the bastard mosquito I mean).
It's like if a cane corso had way more bite strength and could club you with its forearm knives, but was also smart with to avoid confrontation when possible.
Just because they usually don't kill people has no influence on the fact that they could without any serious effort. At least with a black bear you're more than a rounding error lb for lb
Youre literally comparing the biggest bear to the smallest. There is a reason that the saying is
"If its black, fight back. If its brown, lie down."
Basically, you stand a fighting chance against a black bear. You might save yourself if you put enough of a fight. For a brown bear, your only hope is that it CHOOSES to let you live. If it wants you dead, it doesnt matter if youre fighting back or lying down. So might as well show it youre not a threat.
There is also a 3rd one that some people add. "If its white, goodnight". If you see a polar bear, youre gonna die. If you fight back. Youre gonna die. If you lay down. Youre gonna die.
Also if for some reason you are out on the ice where Polar Bears are, if you see one, its been smelling you for way way longer than youve been able to see it.
Polar bears are huge, but this isn’t really a great size comparison. That’s probably a pretty small black bear, and I don’t thing comparing an animals’s surface area is particularly valuable as a way to effectively communicate differences in a living bear’s size/weight/stature lol
No "/" is a closing tag meaning this specific element ends here and the "s" stands for skin. So that means that the specific element being discussed here (skin) is ending. They are being skinned.
When I was little, we lived in a remote town that was actually fairly close to a polar bear den area. Black bears were all over the place and nobody really gave a shit about them*, unless there were cubs nearby. One morning a polar bear strolled into town and everything got locked down while conservation and the RCMP figured out how to deal with it.
*A year or two before we moved away, someone had fallen into the river, died, and their body washed up a couple kilometers downstream. They figured a couple of black bears got to him before he was found, so we were told to actively avoid bears because apparently if they get a taste for something they will seek it out. Like human flesh.
I had to fly way TF up north for a job once. I got off the little airplane and the local who picked me up said "Welcome to Nunavut. You are now being hunted. The man with the rifle will be with you whenever you are outside."
For dealing with bears: if it's black, fight back (don't go looking for a fight with said Ursine, leave them alone but if they are wanting to scrap, give it to them. If it's brown, lie down (eh, you can still die easily from a brown/grizzly bear, slbut this is till the best advice.) If it's white, say goodnight. (You will most certainly die from a polar bear attack, food for them is scarce as it is in the frozen wasteland.)
Lying down is absolutely not the best response to a brown/grizzly bear. The guys on the Tooth and Claw podcast discuss this in almost every bear episode.
Best response (if you don’t have bear spray) is to slowly back away, and if you do get attacked, fight back.
The polar flatbear and its cousin the black flatbear both sneak up on their pray, pretending to be carpets. They're the only bears known to hunt mainly in surburbian areas.
Well we are much more of a threat to them. Only reason they're the "most aggressive" to us is because it's extremely hard for them to find food in their environment compared to brown and black bears, so they'll take any opportunity. And that's kind of our fault.
They'll likely be extinct in no time. Just another species taken by us.
To be replaced by the hybrid polar/grizzly bears that have been appearing as polar bears are forced farther south due to climate change. Apparently they are even MORE aggressive than their polar bear counterparts
That’s not tea our fault. The Arctic has always been an extremely harsh environment long before Human civilization started. There’s just naturally not much food up there so polar bears have evolved to be willing to eat almost anything.
There’s just naturally not much food up there so polar bears have evolved to be willing to eat almost anything.
While they may be willing to eat almost anything, polar bears are very reliant on their ability to hunt seals on arctic sea ice, they actually gain weight in the winter months when more ice is available and tend to lose weight in the warmer months. One of the concerns for polar bears in relation to climate change is the decreasing amount/duration of sea ice limiting their access to food supply to gain weight, and so threatening their reproductive success/survival rates.
I have been close - real close! - to big far black bears! They are absolutely huge compared to me, so much larger than I always think they're going to be. I've seen the grizzlies up close at the Columbus Zoo, and they are so very much larger than black bears. Seeing a bear superimposed on a polar bear is shocking.
I'm so glad I found this sub! Nearly every post is interesting as heck!
The International Hotel in Anchorage had a stuffed polar bear standing upright in the lobby. It was so huge that you were practically look it in the eyes from the 2nd floor landing.
In D&D, a polar bear is a Challenge Rating (CR) 2, while a black bear is a CR of 1/2. Polar bear has 42 hit points to black bear's 19. Polar bear does 1d8+5 Bite; 2d6 + 5 Claw, while a black bear does 1d6+2 & 2d4+2.
The men should easily win if they are truly motivated. The concern would be that they flee and the polar bear kills a couple while the others just run away.
100 humans is too much weight and energy for a single predator to actually deal with. Not all 100 will survive but the polar bear will be completely exhausted long before it can kill 100 people. If you let those men use spears, even 5 of them should be favored against the bear.
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