I'm pretty sure I read something about bears and wolves cooperating somewhat frequently, especially when the wolf is without a pack (which happens when young wolves search for their own territory).
I was hiking and saw a black bear. I stopped and started backing away slowly; it was a good 100 yards away. A deer came bounding out of nowhere and we all bolted different ways 😅
I live in northern New England and when I mention hiking with my dog the first concern from others is always black bears. I always chuckle because unless they're cornered or you get too close to cubs with mama bear around, they're not an issue.
I was in the Tetons several years ago and there was a baby moose on the trail blocking are only way out. We started looking around and momma moose was up hill above the baby eating. A few people piled up because no one was going to pass the baby while it was on the trail. It finally headed up to mom and we all got the hell out of there pronto. They are big!
I have deer, and black bears all the time here by Eaton Canyon in the LA area. But I was just on the OR coast about 10 minutes south of Cannon Beach, with lots of huge moose on the property. OMG they were so intimidating looking. 😳 For the bears at home, we warn them we’re walking around outside by talking, honk our horn when we drive up, give them a chance to leave. Mountain lions… just glad they prefer not to hang around much and no way we’re getting a water feature like my husband wants to.
When I was a delinquent teen, I was hanging out outside the Walmart with one of my delinquent friends, and a security guard chasing a shoplifter accidentally shoulder checked him and knocked him to the ground. He just instinctively yelled "NOBODY SAW SHIT" and booked it before the guy could even apologize or help him up. Sounds like a nature version of that.
Most predators don't want to fight other species unless they are competing for food. It's not worth the risk of getting a wound that might become infected.
Our cat used to have a fox that would wait on a wall in our back yard for us to let her out so they could go play. When she was inside she'd always be in my room, and sometimes my mom would just knock like "hey tell Monkey her friend is here to pick her up" and then I'd carry her out to the back door and off they'd go.
There is a small zoo outside of Cleveland, Georgia. You can drive through one area and feed all kinds of animals, some of which are bison. I have a picture with one beside me, his nose is the size of my face. They are huge!
Every time I see someone walk up to Ice Age mega fauna in national Parks I'm reminded how fucking stupid people are since they clearly don't have the part of the brain that makes you stop ( at a generous distance), gawk, and think "that's the size of a car, I should stay over here and not piss that off"
I've been told that donkeys, if left alone like on abandoned ranchland, will often pair up with whatever the closet group to a donkey is available, so deer or horses or whatever vaguely donkey-shaped animal is available.
They're able to bond pretty well and this came up because I was in a very remote area of Texas and a donkey came up to check us out. He was friendly but the warning was he was likely with the wild deer population and may attack us if he thought we were harming the deer. (We were surveying deer, so catch and release)
It was actually kind of scary, donkeys are awesome but you do not want one mad at you.
I work in the OR and we worked a case of a farmer that got on the wrong side of the fence with a donkey that was unfamiliar with him. Farmer was messed up (many vascular injuries, lacerations, broken bones) but he did survive.
Aw now all I can think of is how anyone could just abandon a sweet lil donkey, what the hell. Like i know sometimes people with farm animals use them for labor purposes so they dont bond eith them the same way as a pet all the time, but I am just not that person and couldn't imagine.
It'd be like moving to a different town and just leaving my cats behind to me (which I know some awful fucking wastes of space do, but its not the norm by any means.)! Couldn't do it.
At least the cuties can get along with other kinds and just assimilate 🥲❤️
If you need a little pick-me-up, I used to volunteer at a rescue place that had several donkeys, and one of them, a very very elderly lady donkey who loved to be leashed up and taken for walks (she was a little blind) was best friends with a chicken.
Like, the chicken and the donkey just became friends on their own, we had lots of fowl around but this one was always with this one donkey, and we think the clucking and other noises helped the mostly blind donkey know where to walk. They even bedded down together at night, and if you took the donkey out for a walk the chicken would usually just sort of trail behind chattering.
Donkeys are resilient I suppose, they'll work something out if needed.
My neighbour has a donkey who lives with her cattle. That animal will tolerate you as long as you stay on your side of his fence line. He’ll even stretch his nose over the fence for pats or carrots. But if you hop sides, look the fuck out.
I remember years back one of the farmer’s adult sons came to visit; I spied him out on a walk towards the back fields through one of cattle pastures. About five minutes later I spotted him at a dead run for the fence with the donkey in pursuit, lol.
Yeah a mule killed a cougar in Wyoming about 15 years ago iirc chased and pinned it down by dropping to its knees and pressed its chest into the cougars back and then bit its neck and killed it.
I worked in Fraud protection in a bank and we had a whole secret language made up of Anchorman quotes, so we could talk shit about the customers that stole from us on the regular and got away with it.
I'd try for my dog. Considering he tried to fight a statue of bears once I don't think if he found wild bears the scenario would play out like the above.
It depends. I'm from Alaska and my dog would go off for a few hours or a couple of days. If this dog is like my dog, there is a non zero chance that he's going to bring his new friends home. My dog did it several times when we were camping. He was so happy when they came lumbering back into camp at night with he buddies. He thought everyone screaming was screaming "Good Boy Tark!"
Yea I could definitely see that. I spent some time in skagway. I remember walking out of work around 11pm. Still kinda twilight hours. I turned onto the Main Street and saw a fox and a black bear rummaging through some shit together. Bears seam pretty sociable.
Side note. Biggest damn fox I’ve ever seen. It was like a medium breed dog.
Bears are silly, because they obviously have the capability of being little murder machines.
But they seem to genuinely just be too lazy for that. They'd rather dig through trash or eat an insane amount of berries off a bush. "Oh, a fox is following me. Okay. I get the best bits of food, though."
Skagway is awesome. That drive north through a little bit of BC is in the running for the most beautiful scenery I've ever driven through. I could see how "Skagway, when you're visiting" is a bit more fun than "Skagway, third year you live there" though.
I think of it like if you see a crazy ass squirrel that jumps on people and shit, you're running away from it, even though if it comes to a fight, obviously the human will beat the squirrel. But like...why go through the trouble? And if a squirrel just starts following you around, like hey...new friend.
Well, I'll go with wholesome for the simple fact that the dog is still alive and the bears don't seem to give a F that he's there following! The dog is even "annoying" them by wanting to play, and all the bears do is push him away! If they felt threatened, they would have already dealt with him by now, trust me!
Now the terrifying part would be retrieving the dog from said bears!
This whole video is crazy to me. It’s clear the bears don’t feel the least bit threatened by the dog but when he play bites the ones leg and it doesn’t snap is nuts to me. Maybe this isn’t extremely rare for bears to be sociable with other animals but I’ve never seen any instance of that before.
Yup, when he bites its back leg from behind is when it really shocked me. It really goes against like any instinct you would think the bear would have, especially looking like it’s a momma bear with 2 older cubs.
This video is the most Husky thing I've ever seen. Completely oblivious to the danger and just there to look pretty and tell the bears how it should be done.
I love the shot at the end where the bear looks up at the drone like "Would you guys please come get your dog? Huskies never shut up and they never get tired."
Dude, in the beginning when the husky sits down and then the bear gets up to move towards him in the husky immediately moves away. Everyday with my husky. Pet, me. No, not like that.
If you are wondering how is this even possible, it was because of a few things aligned together.
From what I have been told, this area has an abundance of food due to local fish processing facility in the area, the bears can feast on leftover fish, so they are well fed, which turns off their survival mode.
The dog is not being agressive or show signs of fear, it's being playful, which puts mama bear in a good mood, seeing the dog as harmless.
And lastly, a lot of people may not know this but bears and dogs came from the same evolutionary line, yes they share heritage called Caniformia, which overtime evolved in different tree branches, such as bears and dogs, so these creatures are long distant cousins basically.
And lastly, a lot of people may not know this but bears and dogs came from the same evolutionary line, yes they share heritage called Caniformia, which overtime evolved in different tree branches, such as bears and dogs, so these creatures are long distant cousins basically.
Not really. They likely use similar indicators to communicate...their body language might be much more similar, they can understand each other's signals insofar as determinig the threat level of the other. Having a similar baseline can possibly mean everything here.
Curious if it could also be in part hormones. I know mama animals will adopt babies that aren’t the same species sometimes.
Maybe the mom bear just turned around like huh I have more kids then I thought and this one didn’t come out quite right, then she just bear shrugs and moves along.
As an owner of a husky, I imagine that the dog just somehow juked out all attempts at eating it, just thinking it was play. This went on for so long, the bears gave up trying to eat the husky, and just accepted him as a plucky sidekick.
My husky was notorious for "playing" with moose. So many times we seen him looking out the window dodging death via antlers. The stupid idiot was just jumping around playing the "Come chase me!" game.
Makes sense, a bear mama and her cubs aren't known for looking for outside company to hang out with them. But the dog isn't behaving in a threatening manner so they don't really have a strong motivation to go aggro on it, it's easier to just tolerate it hanging around.
I'm kinda surprised the bears are tolerating him as they tend not be the biggest fan of dogs as evidenced by a lot of bear attacks tend to involve dogs. Dogs switch to aggression posturing quick, and make a lot of noise.
Certain dog breeds can be trained to scare off grizzlies as the quick movements, barrage of noise, pack instinct to gang up / circle tend to spook bears as larger dogs are thought to be perceived as wolves analogs.
Finnish / Karelian bear dogs. I've seen them in Banff / Kananaskis with park rangers. My uncle in Ontario had one, they're awesome, (not so much as pets unless you have acres of land, which he did).
They can work alone. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDww5t40eR0
In my early 20s, I was smoking out on my porch in the middle of the night and my cat Kirby walked by and was leading a pack or raccoons, in a perfect straight line, following casually behind her. Miss her, she was very cool
I guess husky really are the closest relatives to there true natural wolf cousins, often lone wolf’s pair up with other predators to hunt and have a companion.
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u/da_Aresinger 7h ago
I'm pretty sure I read something about bears and wolves cooperating somewhat frequently, especially when the wolf is without a pack (which happens when young wolves search for their own territory).