Not ‘man-eating beasts’: Study suggests aggressive frigid bears young, hungry

Jim Wilder was a immature researcher on a solidified Beaufort Sea when he had his initial frigid bear encounter.

“We were camped out on a sea ice in front of a maternal basement watchful for (mama bear) to come out with her cubs,” he recalls. “A frigid bear came adult and sniffed a tent, right where my conduct was, when we was sleeping in a center of a night and went on a happy way.”

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Wilder, now a scientist with a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Alaska, is a co-author of a investigate examining all available cases of frigid bear attacks on humans in a 5 countries where a animals live. He pronounced his story shows because a renouned thought of a good Arctic hunters as eager predators of humans is a myth.

“They’re portrayed as these intensely dangerous man-eating beasts that are looking to conflict people, that we consider is sincerely inaccurate.”

Attacks aren’t that common, he said. Although he acknowledges his list is deficient and doesn’t embody information from Arctic aboriginals, Wilder’s group found customarily 73 available rapacious attacks in a 144 years between 1870 and 2014, 20 of them fatal.

The study, published in a Wildlife Society Bulletin, also suggests fat ‘n’ happy frigid bears don’t hunt humans.

Nearly two-thirds of a attacks were by immature adult bears who were starting to starve.

The investigate customarily found 73 available frigid bear attacks on humans in a 144-year period. (submitted by Kevin Xu)

Almost all a attacks were by males, customarily young. Of a 11 that weren’t, many were females fortifying cubs.

Polar bears, pronounced Wilder, equivocate risk. Unlike black or grizzly bears, that can eat plants if necessary, frigid bears contingency hunt.

“If they get injured, that impairs their ability to hunt,” he said. “There isn’t a lot of inducement for them to be assertive — unless times are bad.

“That seems to flip a switch. They seem to spin into a opposite beast.”

Even deer frigid bears will hunt people if they’re desperate, Wilder said. And some-more than one-quarter of a attacks in a investigate occurred in towns.

Both resources are roughly unheard of in grizzlies or black bears, he said.

Climate change could wear conflicts

The commentary advise that human-bear conflicts are going to get worse as meridian change whittles divided during a sea ice a bears use as their categorical sport height for a fat-rich seals that form a biggest partial of their diet. The news found that scarcely 9 in 10 attacks occurred between Jul and December, when a sea ice was during a lowest.

“If we lived in a coastal community, a things we would be disturbed about are detriment of sea ice — some-more bears on shore, in poorer condition.”

Geoff York, another co-author, pronounced some Canadian Arctic communities have already beheld changes.

“We had stories from northern residents where they said, ‘Growing adult as kids, we used to go camping on a land in a wall tents. We don’t do that any more. We have a bound cabin with tough walls.”‘

Many village residents — generally those along a shores of Hudson Bay, where sea ice shelter is endless and bear health is disappearing — are seeking to be lerned as competent bear spotters to assistance strengthen industrial or systematic camps.

People need collection to live with hungrier bears that are going to be on seaside longer, York said.

Polar bears have been famous to make their approach into Arctic communities on arise in hunt of food, like this one in Tuktoyaktuk, Northwest Territories. Researchers advise that meridian change could make human/polar bear conflicts some-more prevalent in a future. (Kyla Lucas)

Nunavut is arising kits containing flares, bear bangers and bear mist to assistance keep hunters protected on a land. But those materials are deliberate dangerous products and formidable to ship.

“A lot of a northern communities only don’t have entrance to a reduction fatal deterrents,” York said.

In a future, not all bear encounters will be as soft as a one Wilder recalls from that long-ago basement stakeout.

“I demeanour behind on that with a small nervousness,” he said. “I only appreciate my propitious stars that bear was substantially in good or normal physique condition.”

Article source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/polar-bear-attack-study-1.4202280?cmp=rss