| 1 | All polar bears are Irish |
The headlines rang out all over the world. The origins of polar bears had finally been discovered – they were secretly Irish! No, they hadn’t been spotted wearing green clothing and hats emblazed with four leaf clovers. Instead, fresh archaeological evidence indicated that all living polar bears were descended from brown bears living in Ireland, according to 17 sets of ancient bones and teeth found in 8 caves. This scuppered the original belief that they evolved on the ABC Islands of Alaska.
The oldest discovered brown bear fossils in Ireland were 43-38,000 years old, and had DNA most closely related to today’s brown bears in eastern Europe. That was an expected result, but the brown bear fossils from colder prehistoric times, 38,000-10,000 years ago, had a strange yet undeniable connection to polar bears. In fact, they had the closest connection of any brown bear fossils yet.
The updated theory was that polar bears originally diverged from brown bears around 400,000 years ago. They then spent thousands of years roaming the icecap as a separate species, until around 30,000 years ago, when they moved south with the expanding icecap and bred with the brown bears of Ireland. Hybrids were born, and those hybrids were the maternal ancestors of all polar bears alive today. The proto polar bears which never made it to Ireland all died out.
Or so the headlines claimed. Two years later, the entire theory was discredited by new evidence. Fun fact: the best place in Ireland for brown bear fossils is Poll namBear, or Cave Of The Bears.
| 2 | Suicide by bear (attempted) |
Sitting in his cell in Kingman Arizona State Prison, Tracy Province was undoubtedly highly placed on the bad guy list of America. His crimes included a brutal murder and robbery back in 1992, but on July 30th 2010, he and his fellow inmates Danil Renwick and John McCluskey managed to escape when their alleged accomplice Cassyln Welch hurled cutting tools over the barbed wire perimeter fence.
The escape went unnoticed for hours, by which time the villainous group had murdered a retired couple and burnt their car to destroy all traces of evidence. Strangely, this made Province so despondent that he asked Welch to drive him to Yellowstone Park.
In January 2011, Province revealed in a police interview how he had hatched a simple plan: inject himself with a lethal dose of heroin, lie down, and offer himself up as bear food. By his calculations, this would be totally painless.
Province reached the rugged mountain slopes, and actually began to prepare the drug. All he needed now was the bear. But at the last moment, a voice in his head told him to step back. Province walked back to his car and travelled to Indiana to visit family instead.
Alas, Province was recaptured in the sleepy town of Meeteetse, Wyoming after 2 weeks on the run. He was holding a hitchhiking sign inscribed with “Casper”, with a small 9mm handgun in his pocket. As for Renwick, he washed up in Colorado and was captured after a fierce shootout with police, while McCluskey and Welch were cuffed in Springville, Arizona.
| 3 | Rare subspecies shot dead |
The Syrian brown bear is one of the rarest and most special subspecies in the world. Despite people generally associating bears with woods and mountains, this desert bear used to roam the entire Middle East (not just Syria), but is now extirpated from Egypt, Israel and Jordan. Snowy paw prints from 2004 indicate that it may survive in Syria itself, but the consensus is that a few hundreds bear survive across its heartland turf of Iran, Iraq and Turkey.
Back in September 2011, the saga took a sad new twist when a brown bear wandered into the Iranian villages of Eidershan and Heris, just south of the city of Saleb. It was searching for food, and quickly ransacked some local orchards. The villagers attacked, but this only enraged the bear; 4 villagers were injured and 1 ended up in hospital in Tabriz. Environmental protection officers then arrived on the scene to save the bear, but a quarrel soon broke out with the local villagers. They never got the chance to fire their tranquiliser guns, and instead, local hunters unleaded 8 bullets into the bear’s body, killing it instantly. Another Syrian brown bear was gone, and vicious accusations flung back and forth in the local area over who had made the fatal mistakes.
In happier news, those fabled paw prints in Syria showed up again in 2011, and they were spotted in the same location: the anti-Lebanon mountains.
| 4 | Skier falls into hibernation cave |
This is a story which you know won’t end well. In a terrible case of luck, 12 year old Olle Frisk was skiing with his friends at the popular Swedish ski resort of Funäsdalen on March 28th 2011. The circumstances were murky, but somehow, Frisk lost control and veered off piste. Then he saw a strange bump appear in the snow, which gradually shook itself free to reveal a mama bear’s head underneath.
The boy plunged into the bear’s cave, and almost instantly, he felt the bear’s massive weight pressing against him. Razor sharp claws ripped into his back while fierce teeth sank into his legs. He played dead, and miraculously, it worked. After some deliberation, the bear concluded that the threat was gone, and walked away. After several heart-stopping seconds, Fritz crawled out of the cave and shouted for his friends, who yelled at the top of their lungs to scare the bear away.
The boy’s luck was particularly poor, as some bears have been observed taking up to 8 minutes to rouse from their hibernation slumber, even when their cubs are being attacked and calling for help. Tragically, all 3 cubs were executed by the Swedish authorities, as the mother failed to return.
From his hospital bed, Frisk wished that they’d been spared: “I don’t see why our lives should be so much more important than the bears”. The same report showed pictures of deep red, but steadily healing claw marks on his back.
| 5 | Cruel hunting banned in Russia |
The date was March 16th 2011, and the Russian Duma had just passed what felt like a peace offering to the country’s gigantic population of bears. It was a “Rules Of The Hunt” legislation, a set of laws which finally banned the decades-old practise of shooting brown bears as they hibernate in their winter den. This practise was a disaster for newborn cubs, who lacked survival skills such as hunting and foraging and commonly starved to death without their mothers. Now, they would finally be protected.
International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) had been campaigning for this move since 1995, and had gathered 400,000 signatures in favour of the Russian law. The new law ordered that Russian brown bears may only be hunted in two seasons: April 1st to May 31st, and August 1st to November 30th. If, for example, you were about to fire the bullet, only for the clock to strike midnight and make it December 1st, you’d be out of luck – sorry.
At 100,000 animals, Russia has the world’s highest population of brown bears, divided into subspecies such as the East Siberian brown bear, the Kamchatka brown bear, and the common Eurasian brown bear of the Pyrenees and eastern Europe. The law also made it illegal to hunt bears under 1 year old, and mother bears with cubs under one year old.
Separately, IFAW operates a bear rehabilitation facility in Russia’s Tver region, which had released over 150 orphaned bear cubs back into the wild as of 2011.
| 6 | Medo the Slovenian bear |
Throughout 2011, Slovenia was so transfixed by its latest lovable animal mascot that the whole country practically shut down. His name was Medo, which is Slovenian for bear. In May, the 4 month old cub wandered into the garden of Matevz Logar and his wife, and refused to leave. Soon, he was playing happily on the furniture, climbing trees like a monkey, and rough housing with Matevz, his apparent new father. Slovenians’ hearts melted by the millions when pictures were released of Medo hugging the family Rottweiler, and a now private youtube video shows Medo suckling from the family cow. He was particularly fond of rolling on the family’s furniture, and the theory was that he was abandoned by his mother.
The Logars begged the government for permission to keep him, proposing a 35 foot enclosure to meet all his bear needs. But wildlife authorities argued that the lovable teddy bear would soon be a 500 pound beast capable of ripping limbs off with accidental swipes. Reluctantly, the Logars agreed, but a single day before the Four Paws animal charity arrived to remove him, Medo vanished from the family home. It was bear-nap of the cruellest level. His enclosure had been broken into, and Slovenia was frantic with worry.
Several days later, a man “found” Medo not far away, after the authorities offered a 1100 euro reward, and he was whisked off to a bear orphanage.
| 7 | Horseback bear attack |
Erin Bolster was a 5ft 10, 25 year old guide working for Swan Mountain Outfitters in Glacier National Park. On July 30th 2011, she set out for a forest tour on horseback with 8 male customers, including a father and his 8 year old son. The team made good progress down the lush forest clearing. The weather was fine, and all went well, until Bolster’s horse Tonk inexplicably stopped. Bolster sensed trouble, and suddenly, a white-tailed deer dashed out the vegetation to her left. This was followed by a charging grizzly bear which was later estimated to be 700-750 pounds.
Most of the horses fled in panic at the mere sight of the grizzly, joining the herd of deer. However, the horse carrying the 8 year old merely ambled away, with the boy desperately trying to cling to its back. The bear took notice, and changed direction towards its newly acquired target.
The problem was that while on horseback, the riders were forbidden to use pepper spray, in case it blinded the horse. So Bolster did the only thing she could – she whacked Tonk and encouraged him forward. The scared horse moved forward and formed a protective barrier between the bear and boy. Couple with the loud offensive shouts from Bolster, the bear stopped 10 feet away, looking uncertain. It geared up for another charge, but at Bolster’s insistence, Tonk did the same.
Finally, the bear turned around and galloped into the vegetation. The boy was in shock, but the father was hit hardest, having tried and failed to encourage his own horse to form a shield. All in all, it was a victory for horses, but the question of whether bear or horse would win a real fight remains unsettled. Bolster wasn’t worried, calling it a one in a million event. Tonk the horse was leased, but this story pushed Bolster over the edge into buying him.
| 8 | “Jewellery” in wild bear’s nose |
From a distance, the bear appeared to be wearing a majestic nose ring, like it had appointed itself king of the jungle, or maybe king of the sub-arctic steppe. The day had come – finally, grizzly bears were learning to wear jewellery! But this wasn’t a decoration at all – it was a fishing lure which had become snagged on its nose tissues.
The Chilkoot river of Alaska is popular with bears and fishermen alike, due to the plentiful salmon that swims in its waters. It’s normal for 19 bears to surround the river during the height of summer, and any lures that accidentally snag on the bears’ hides tend to fall off quickly. But Anthony Crupi, who had coincidentally spent several months monitoring this bear with a radio collar, knew that the nose area was another story. All 3 barbs were stuck in its nostril, and worse, the wound was becoming infected.
So on August 10th, he and his team tranquilised both the cub and its mother. The fishing utensil came free in no time. “I pushed in and backed it out, just like you would a hook in a fish’s mouth. It came out real easy”, said Crupi. To seal the deal, they injected the cub with Bio-mycin, the animal equivalent of penicillin, before rubbing a topical antibiotic into its wounds. Happily, the bear weighed a healthy 160 pounds and was in “great condition”. 3 hours later, the bear stood up on its hind quarters, stretched its limbs, and went on its way again.
| 9 | Ukraine protects its bears |
In Ukraine, there was once a type of bear called the “vodka bear”. Unfortunately, this wasn’t a rare subspecies, but around 80 animals kept in zoos which commonly appeared on television and were forced to drink vodka to the amusement of rich guests, many of whom were drunk themselves.
This barbaric practise stemmed from the Russian empire which Ukraine was once part of. Some of the vodka bears were even forced to perform to patrons of bars and restaurants, despite the fact that feeding bears alcohol is banned in Ukraine.
In June 2011, Environmental Minister Mykola Zlochevsky announced that these harsh days of cruelty were finally over. The charity Four Paws International stepped in, and by December, dozens of bear owners had agreed to release the bears to a new sanctuary that Four Paws was planning on the border with Hungary, called the Brown Bear Rehabilitation Centre. The remaining vodka bear owners would be forced to release them, according to Four Paws. The new facility would even have a “bear ambulance” to transport inebriated bears. The main hero was Dr. Amir Khalil, a South African vet who had already rescued “dancing bears” kept in cages in Bulgaria.
Critics argued that the Ukrainian government only rushed to the rescue because they were about to host the Euro 2012 football tournament and a flood of nosy journalists was imminent. The first bears to be rescued were Rosa, Potab, Mashenka, and Yura, but Rosa was already a fully-fledged alcoholic.
| 10 | Alaskan grizzly swimming marathon |
Every year, grizzly bears seem to reveal new and unexpected skills, so much so that biologists may be getting worried. The latest was a nameless female bear residing in Montana, who had been fitted with a radio collar for over 1 year by wildlife biologists back in June 2010.
This bear was obsessed with water, as initially, she was relocated to a remote region, before being drawn back to her familiar haunts of Flathead Lake, a body of water measuring 197 square miles. The researchers spotted her swimming for 8-12 hours at a time, which isn’t on the level of polar bears with their 200 mile marathons, but far exceeds the most storied Olympic athlete.
She started by swimming from the Painted Rocks landmark to the large Cedar island, where she lay and relaxed for 24 hours. Then she jumped back into the lake and headed southwest, swimming for 3 uninterrupted miles to Wild Horse Island, where she stayed for 3 days. Her record took place in the southern portion of Flathead Lake, where she swam for 7 uninterrupted miles. She took a 1 day rest on the tiny Bird Island in the centre of the lake, before jumping back in.
Finally, she grew tired of Flathead Lake and journeyed east towards Swan Lake in the Mission Mountains, where she finally settled down, according to the biologists. Eventually, the radio tracking collar dropped off as it was programmed to do. The bear’s 1200 mile journey would have been epic over any terrain.
Leave a Reply