Suppose you were out camping and woke up one morning, opened a tent flap, and saw this! (The bear on the left, that is.)
What would you do?
Odds are, the first thing you’d do would be make a face very much like the bear’s.
You’d open your mouth, show your teeth, and scream.
Just like the bear is doing.
Only the difference is that while the bear is giving a scream of rage (or agression–whatever), you’d be screaming in fright.
Now: Why is the bear screaming in rage (or whatever)? By bellowing, he’s making a loud, startling noise that may paralyze you with fear. By showing you his teeth, he’s also threatening you, which will again tend to produce a fear reaction.
So why do you scream in fear? I mean, sure, it’s a reflex. But why do you do it? Well, by making a making a loud, startling noise at the bear, you may cause him to startle and freeze up. By showing him your teeth, you may intimidate him.
Your instictive scream of fear may produce in him the same reaction that his instinctive scream of rage is designed to produce in you.
In other words, screams of fear may be an instinctive reflex designed to save our lives by making a potential attacker think that we’re about to attack them. They’re attempts to fake out our attackers by returning their attempt to intimidate us with a mirror effort to intimidate them.
At least there’s a chance, and a chance is better than just getting eaten by a bear.
Or that’s what occurred to me when reflecting on the scream reflex.
AAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!
He’s cute!
I’d heard that the best think (and probably most unlikely)to do when confronted with a bear (thank goodness I live in the middle of England) is to curl up in a ball and play dead.
The animal may maul you a bit but there’s a good chance he will leave you alone when he realises you’re no threat.
I like documentaries, what can I say…I’m a fount of useless knowledge.
God Bless.
I’ve heard that playing dead was the thing to do as well until we had several bear attacks in our area. The advice in the local papers from experts was to fight the bear off if he was about to attack. First by making yourself look as big as you can (standing with arms in the air) and second, by making a lot of noise (screaming). The idea is to intimidate and scare the animal away. The worst thing to do is to run from an attacking bear. This just increases the bear’s desire to catch you.
Good point–I had not thought of that before. Another benefit of screaming, at least for a social species like humans, is that when someone is about to become bear-food, the other members of his clan or tribe know that something has gone wrong, and will have a little time to grab a spear and/or skeedaddle.
I believe the prairie dog will actually stand up and give a distinctive call when a hawk is spotted. While that calls attention to the individual, it will permit the other members of the community to get under cover. Perhaps this also why rabbits have such a chilling scream when they die–it’ll warn the others that a predator (like my family’s cats) is nearby.
I saw a documentary about bear attacks (maybe one of the ones ukok saw). A bear was approaching a man, and the man put his arms in the air, and the bear ran off. They said that only works on some kinds of bears, though. If memory serves, it would make black bears just want to kill you more.
If I were in Bear Country I might just carry some protection (permitted or not – I’ll pay a fine rather than get myself or those with me mauled by a bear).
Oh yeah, and I would say, “No! It is I who will eat you!
Whenever we were in bear country, my dad carried a gun.
A BIG gun.
While my dad was building a cabin in the mountains he and Mom slept in a tent (with a large gun!). During the night a bear woke up my mom who in turn woke my dad and told him to get his gun. Unfortunately his arm had fallen asleep and he couldn’t pick up his gun. They managed to scare the bear away anyhow (I’m sure my mother’s screaming face at the door of the tent helped) and spent the rest of the night in the station wagon.
They always made us kids wear whistles to blow on in case of bear sightings. I wonder if the extra noise from the whistle is more effective than showing your teeth in a scream?
“By showing him your teeth, you may intimidate him.”
So, should I just leave them in a glass of water out in front of the tent overnight?
LOL!
“Playing dead” seems to be a misnomer for what the experts actually recommend, which is NOT going limp at first sight of a bear, but rather if you are actually attacked trying to protect your vital organs by curling into a tight fetal ball with your hands protecting the back of your neck.
However, a lot depends on whether the bear is merely threatened by you or is actually hungry and wants to eat you. A bear that wants to eat you is obviously not going to stop because you play dead, but other bears will often break off the attack once it’s clear you’re not a threat.
They also say that black bears are easier to fight off (duh, being smaller than browns/grizzlies).
There’s a list of bear attack survival books here.
Failing the ‘playing dead’ thing, I can do big and scary without even trying.
God Bless.
AAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!
But if he was typing and was startled by a bear, he wouldn’t *write* “AAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!”, he’d just say it.
“What would you do?”
Well, after wetting myself, I’d probably reach for my trusty sidearm. And if I couldn’t get to that, I’d take Boo Boo hostage. I think that would make Yogi stand down.
“But if he was typing and was startled by a bear, he wouldn’t *write* “AAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!”, he’d just say it.”
Maybe he was dictating.
Do you suppose he meant the Camaaaaaargue?
Where’s that?
France, I think.
All of these bear survival tips are interesting, but what is the proper response when confronted by the legendary Black Beast of Aaauugh?
Why, of course, it’s… RUN AWAY!!!
Actually RUN AWAY is futile (like resistance), All you can do is hope the animator suffers a sudden heart-attack. That, of course, doesn’t help with the problem of bears.
I vote for ukok’s comment about not screaming. About five years ago I did in fact poke my head out of our tent in NH’s White Mountians to shoo away what my wife thought was a racoon, only to be confonted by a very,very large black bear. Fortunately, he wasn’t angry at me; he was just scrounging for food and we didn’t have any in the tent.
I dived back into the tent and whispered, “That’s not a racoon, sweetie.” And the two of us lay very, very quiet and trembling with terror until he moved on. He did not come through the tent wall, I’m happy to report.
If the Animator of bears suffered a sudden heart attack, we’d be in trouble. Well, actually, I guess it wouldn’t matter, as we would no longer exist.
What we really need to know is how survive an encounter with a rabbit of Caerbannog lying outside your tent flap. I don’t suspect screaming would work in that case.
I heard if you encounter a bear in the forest and he starts chasing you, you should run uphill. that way, when the bear catches up to you, your too tired to care about getting mauled to death. I think it was on National Geographic.
Additional advice.
First off, you don’t keep food in the tent.
You, in fact, hang it from tree boughs where the bears will have a hard time getting to it, but above all else you don’t keep it where you sleep.
Second off, the most terrible bears are the cute little bears. Those mean you may be standing between a mama bear and her baby. RUN AWAY.
just remember that you do not have to outrun an angry bear – you just have to outrun your companion
But doesn’t the 2nd amendment give me the right to keep and arm bears?
I just saw this post and felt I’d comment on it even though it is pretty old.
One time I was in the Adirondack Mountains here in New York (the real thing, not the drated city of the same name down by New Jersey) staying in one-room cabin at a biological reasearch station on Cranberry Lake (in the northwest part of the Adirondack Park). I was alone at night and heard what sounded like a dog eating something outside the cabin door. I think you can see where this is going.
In my folly I went to the door and opened it to see what was happening, and of course found myself face to face with a black bear about two feet away. It had been licking or chewing on a paper bag that one of my cabin-mates apparently had had a sandwich in and had just left on the ground (@*%$ punks!). The bear bore its teeth and growled. I slowly (not too slowly!) took one step back and closed the door. I then heared the bear rush away into the woods, and it made such a noise as it ran through the ferns and hobblebush that I could tell it kept running for some distance.
Moral of the story: they are (at least sometimes) as afraid of you as you are of them. That roar may really be a scream of fright too.
By the way, while I was studying forest pathology research papers my cabin-mates were off drinking at the fire-pit about a mile away. Later that night they got a visit from either the same or a different bear. It wasn’t so kind to them. It drank all the beers in one of their six-packs. I am NOT kidding!