Grand-pappy may have needed your help setting up the ol’ VCR, but there was one thing that he knew: You stay the hell away from bears.
While they may have modeled stuffed animals after bears, trust me when I say that bears don’t want to be your friends. In a sense, they’re like Libertarians; they just want to be left alone, but if you do anything that they construe as threatening, you’re not going to stand a chance.
Knowing this, consider the fact that a bunch of tourists at Yellowstone found a family of bears on the side of the road. While sensible people would have stayed in their cars, these yutzs instead left their cars and approached them.
And by approached them, I mean that they ran at them.
And one of them did so with his child in his arms.
See for yourself:
I had a close encounter with a bear cub in the woods. I just calmly turned around and walked away. I know how unlikely it is that I’m still alive. That’s because if you’re anywhere near a bear cub, mama bear is going to be close by, and she is not going to be reasonable about the situation. Think some trailer-trash stranger-danger mom, except with the literal ability to tear a U.S. marine to shreds.
Now, consider the fact that a bunch of guys saw a mama bear with her cubs, and ran at them, with one of them carrying his daughter in his arms.
Lucky for them, the mama bear and her cubs decided to just run off. And considering that one of the cubs was poking around, she could have easily decided to provide the cameraman with an example of natural selection at work.
Again, bears do not want to be friends. Most animals don’t. The usually just want to be left alone, and some of them can ruin your day if you don’t. And the first such example one can think of would be bears. They’re the closest thing to land-sharks that we have.
Want to befriend a bear? Just play Pokémon.
Magnetricity 