rings mum whilst being eaten by bear ..

Such a grizzly tale...

Mega-merge with 'worst ways to die' thread.

Gummy Panda wrote: »

I've eaten many a girl but they were still alive afterwards :pac:

Only because you've no teeth!

joshrogan wrote: »

That's a Beary distressing situation for her mother. She could gnaw-t see that coming I bet.

That is probably the worst thing I have ever seen written on the internet. Jesus wept.

holystungun9 wrote: »

Mega-merge with 'worst ways to die' thread.

Cheers co-mod.
Will do it as soon as I'm finished my cake

Reloc8 wrote: »

Awful. Words can't convey how awful.

Some sick ****s in this thread too.

The link smells of bull sh!t to me

This is more in relation to polar bears, but is still related to bear attacks.

There was a documentary on earlier, it was either on one of the Discovery channels, or Nat Geo Wild. It was about the area where the British lad was recently killed in Norway by a polar bear. In the same area not that long ago, there was 2 other people killed by polar bears.
A man was killed in one instance. He fired a warning shot in the air, as this usually scares bears away, but this polar bear just charged and attacked, he got killed. Can't remember if it was his friend or authorities who eventually shot the bear.

Another case there was 2 women, they noticed a polar bear coming close to them, and started screaming and shouting at it waving their hands to try and scare it away, it just charged directly and got one of them. The other friend was so terrified that she was next, that she jumped off a massive, near vertical cliff covered in jagged rocks. Luckily she survived with just a broken wrist and went to get help, but when they got there her friend was dead and the bear was then shot.

I think those two deaths happened within 6 weeks of each other, whereas there hadn't been polar bear attacks for a long time before that.

In a third instance, there is a research team working in that area studying seismology. Their husky dog started barking madly, and they looked and saw that there was a polar bear beside it. The polar bear took a swipe with it's paw at the dog, and badly injured it. The researchers are equipped with guns, they thought the polar bear looked like it was going to charge them, so they shot and killed him on the spot. No humans were injured.

The thing is though when these bears were then examined by the scientists, they didn't come to the same conclusions that I have read in newspapers, ie. that the bears attacked out of hunger, and that they were starving.

All 3 polar bears had things in common. They were all young males and they were all extremely well fed and a healthy size. They had a yellow tinge to their underbelly's and under their legs's, which is a sign that they have been eating a lot of seal blubber, their natural diet.

The documentary tried to look at a few theories as to why these attacks occurred. Tests proved that polar bears are much more sensitive to sound than previously thought. They can hear things that us humans can't. The seismology research team I mentioned use very loud diesel engines, and also equipment in the ground, which sends soundwaves through the ground. The polar bears can hear these, and the research team said that they very frequently find their equipment destroyed by polar bears. It turns out that the day they shot and killed the polar bear, they had just discovered yet more of their equipment destroyed, presumably by the same bear.

Apparently this sound really irritates the bears, and they become very agitated so they go to the exact spot and wreck the equipment just to get the sound to stop.

The research center is slap bang in the middle of one of the polar bears main routes for travelling.

Flight records show that just a moment before the woman was attacked and killed a massive "monster" jet had taken off from a nearby base and flown directly over the polar bear. Can't remember the name of the aircraft, but apparently it is extremely loud. The scientists said that this noise would definitely have irritated the bear, when he came across the women he was already in a frightened and stressed state, and when they started screaming, this possibly pushed him over the edge so he would have got a surge of aggression and attacked.

I can't remember the story with the man who got killed, I think he was in the area of the research center, and the warning gun shot instead of scaring the bear, just made it see red and attack.

The area has a good population of bears, and they have seals to eat, they showed the regular travel routes that are taken by the local bears and it showed that the research center is there in the middle of one, I think the attacks happened on these routes too.

All the polar bears who attacked where young males. The documentary explained at what age these young bears leave their mums, and they are naturally very curious creatures. A lot of these young bears may have never even seen a human, so they are very curious about them, and some don't know that they should be afraid of humans so will get close.

The scientist said it was unlikely though that irritating sounds alone would cause these attacks, as the research center is there a few years without any attacks, and in other areas polar bears have learned to get used to the sound of engines and humans.

The scientists explained that fish in the arctic are contaminated with pollutants such as PCBS, the seals eat the fish and then the polar bears eat these fish, thus becoming contaminated themselves. The PCBS cause problems with sexual development in polar bears. The documentary showed some female bears who had very enlarged female genitalia, and small penises.
I found this article about pcbs affecting Norway's polar bears tonight, and it is dated from 1998, so I wouldn't be surprised if the problem has worsened.
http://www.mhhe.com/biosci/pae/es_map/articles/article_14.mhtml

Unfortunately, I missed the end of the documentary, but I presume as the documentary was about what was causing these attacks, they must have being investigating whether these hormones could have played a part in them.

I have to watch the documentary again if I can remember the name of it,as I was distracted whilst watching it and also missed the end, but it seems there could possibly be a lot more to these attacks than "global warming and the starving bears". That may be a cause in some cases, but not in all cases. Other things such as humans polluting their food sources, and disrupting their habitats might play a part too.