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If not friend, why friend-shaped? :(
I understand why they kill us.
In addition to destroying their habitats for strip malls, we rope them into entirely too many of our rhetorical infighting arguments.
It must be unbearable for them.
I’m sorry, I never can resist poking the bear.
I can bearly stand these puns.
Feeling cute, might eviscerate later!
Too be fair, we can kill them too. I bet people kill more bears than bears kill people.
In 2023 hunters reported harvesting 1,616 black bears in Oregon – 680 during the spring season and 936 in the fall
https://myodfw.com/articles/2024-spring-bear-hunting-forecast
Oregon has not documented any fatal bear attacks.
https://www.kptv.com/2023/05/24/bear-attacks-la-grande-man-after-he-shoots-it-twice/
Looked it up fairly recently (cuz you know men got mad about bears or whatever) but don’t have source on me: Black bears cause about 1.2 human deaths per year across all of America.
Takes them five years to finally kill that second human
It’s kinda why I never got the whole would you rather thing. As a fairly big dude, I’d much prefer the bear over a man or a woman. The bear is more than likely just going to scamper off. Even decent people in bad situations are very dangerous creatures, and more than likely, I’m just going to have to take care of a complete stranger in the woods.
That’s probably about right. Black bears don’t get into fights they don’t have to. I don’t know how many dozens of black bears I’ve been around, but the only problem I’ve ever had involved a cub. Even that was a communication issue! I was trying to get the hell out of there, the cub was moving towards me, and the sow didn’t like me moving in any direction lol
How did you handle it
Made myself as big as possible, had my .357 out just in case, and not as slowly as I meant to continued to walk backwards the way I had come. Once she stopped coming towards me I turned around and went back to where I knew a clearing was. I plopped my ass in the middle of the clearing just in case, and waited a while. Once the shadows moved enough I headed back up the path and got to my truck.
The only stories I hear about black bear related deaths typically involve some kind of “Messing With Sasquatch” moment on a couple of cubs.
Yeah, but we’re not cute, so it makes sense
Says you. Actually other animals think we naked apes are totally cute.
I found Snow White
I wish ancient humans had domesticated bears and bred them to be pet-sized
On a less jokey note, pretty much every living mammal has been subjected to domestication attempts at some point in history. Bears, elephants, tigers, hippopotami, moose… More often than not, there’s some kind of inherent physiological reason why it doesn’t work.
Some animals don’t breed well in captivity (pandas, famously, but cheetahs are another classic case). Some can’t handle captivity at all - the few efforts at keeping Great Whites in captivity ended with the animals bludgeoning themselves to death on the walls of their enclosures. Others are consistently too aggressive to effectively tame (zebras, coyotes, chimps, elephants, and pythons are notable for all the historic instances domestication failed for these reasons). And some simply aren’t pleasant household companions - skunks, raccoons, and foxes are all notable for their powerful odors and their propensity to destroy the interiors of homes.
There’s some speculation as to whether cats ever were actually domesticated successfully, or whether we’ve simply chosen to ignore their feral habits as such.
Oh, if you’re particular to the white ones, it’s the -40° that’ll kill you. Not the bear.
celsius or fahrenheit?
It wouldn’t be so bad if they could only cuddle you to death. Still not great, but better…
Dying of easily treatable disease because one can’t afford insulin or a healthy diet vs being loved to death? If only certain people had the choice. And I didn’t mean “loved” in the euphamistic sense.
Tigers are fairly common household pets in places like India, since they very much are like cats and are glad to be a cuddle-bug for free food. However this is at the risk that the tiger will forget herself and maul you in a moment of playfulness or annoyed aggression. And once you’re dead, well, there’s one last meal you can offer before it’s back to life in the jungle.
This is not to say all tigers are amenable. Some are just assholes.
Same with bears, and people have lived alongside bears for eons, knowing full well that alliance only lasts until famine comes a’knocking once again. (Grim fact, – relevant considering famine in Palestine – enough famine will drive us social apes to turn on each other and go full cannibal, which is why it’s regarded as a major humanitarian crisis, and cruel to induce. It’s also why Bron killed all the known thieves in anticipation of the imminent siege.)
In the meantime, Grizzly Man lived with bears for ten years before getting killed by an unfamiliar one that was just a jerk.
Tigers also kill people way more often than bears.
Stats on this are hard to compare because black bears are responsible for 1.2 kills in the US per year and tigers are like 34 kills per year in India which does have like 4x the population of humans, but also there’s a LOT less tigers to do that killing [like 5,000 tigers to 400,000 black bears] So like… yeah.
Cats like to play rough. A housecat who does can hurt you. Imagine a full grown tiger who decides to play. I saw a trainer interview who said a 6 month tiger cub is absolutely lethal. I believe him.
Tigers are not common household pets in India
Tigers are fairly common household pets in places like India
Are you sure this statement is true¿? I never heard about any story of anybody having a fucking tiger as a pet
My evidence is anecdotal, such as videos of people lounging with a tiger in their living room. There’s also the weird thing in the…90s? Where driving around in a large car with a tiger was a dare-sport thing (which is why it appears as an activity in Saints Row: The Third )
I believe it’s not exactly legal to keep tigers or large cats as pets in industrialized parts of the world (at least not without proper holding cells) but there are huge parts of the world that are less industrialized and are not sufficiently policed to stop symbiotic social relationships between humans and wild animals.
On a similar thread, cheetahs are notoriously easy to domesticate, to the point that they’re a problem. If you go out to cheetah territory, say in Kenya, and feed one, it may decide you’re their buddy for life and follow you home. Unlike black bears in Montana or Wyoming that assault tourists for food when they learn that’s a source, it’s for the protection of the currently endangered cheetah population.
As for other large cats, I don’t know how often they companion up. Here in the states, we have mountain lions, but we also have ranger services to police both the lions and the tourists. I suspect in places like Nepal where there are human settlements removed enough from industry there also may be negotiations between leopards and humans with positive outcomes. But that is speculation. I haven’t seen videos of that.
ETA: Scanning news, apparently in 2024 there are a lot of tigers-as-pets in Texas of all places, which is a lot more contrived since it’s not adopting and befriending the beastie from the nearby jungle, but importing them in to be domesticated.
I have heard about wealthy people all over the world keeping big cats as pets but those are always kept in cages or their own enclosures. What seems wrong is you claiming that regular people are keeping tigers as pet. Infact people and tigers are more in conflict due to encroachment of humans into formerly forested areas.
Well, they won’t kill you right away… They’ll toy with you for a while then kill you.
Worth it.
Well, it’s fucked up for them that the bipedes made up of delicious meat have guns…
