A polar bear attacked a woman at Berlin Zoo Friday afternoon after she climbed a fence and jumped into its habitat during feeding time.
Someone managed to catch the rescue on video:
Amazing. We seem to have effectively stopped the natural evolution of a smarter species. Oops, maybe I’m not allowed to talk about evolution here…
You just made a great case for those who don’t believe in evolution.
Is there a beer garden at that zoo?
If that happened here, she’d sue, and have a good chance at winning.
Natural selection at work.
It sounds as if she’ll survive. Let’s at least hope that she’s unable to breed.
Watching that video, I’m amazed that the bears were so gentle with her. Those animals are freakin’ DANGEROUS. I know a few people who have had experience with them in the wild. One of them is a former yacht captain who spent a lot of time in polar waters. He’s got a pretty impressive photo of a bear attempting an attack on their inflatable.
Also, one of my college biology profs specialized in polar bears for a while. She had a great slideshow presentation of her time spent chasing bears by helicopter, shooting them with tranquilizer darts, then trying to get all of the data they needed before the animal woke up. (Have to be sparing with the tranquilizers, because the bears are at risk of overheating if the total dose is too high.) Apparently there is an art to getting into good position in the helicopter so that you can shoot the bear in the butt while it keeps turning to face you. On one occasion, a large male surprised the pilot with a sudden vertical jump, trying to swat the chopper out of the air. Missed one of the pontoons by only a foot or two.
Anyway, my prof emphasized that polar bears are at the very top of the food chain, so anything living thing within reach is considered either a threat, or more likely a snack item.
I guess that the “dump bears” of the Churchill Bay area are a little less strictly territorial, but I’ve always thought that it was a little odd that zoos tend to keep several of these solitary animals together in the same enclosure. Must have to feed them pretty well to keep them docile enough for such an arrangement.
Polar bears are bad asses. She’s lucky she didn’t get the Beluga treatment.
I’m starting to think zoos should be restructured so that humans enter a cage, with the animals free to roam around.
**I’m starting to think zoos should be restructured so that humans enter a cage, with the animals free to roam around. **
Or at least let people who jump into the cages fight their own battles.
Ban zoos!
Ban polar bears!
Ban stupid humans!
It’s for the children.
Polar bears are bad asses. She’s lucky she didn’t get the Beluga treatment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lE-RKRNSG_c
That woman appears to have a similar body fat proportion to the typical seal. I’m sure that she would have been very nutritious for the bears, though I suppose that one might prefer to feed them something with a lower chemical content.
I think a better description/headline for this story is “Polar bear subdues home invader.”
.