What you gonna do if you see this coming right at you?
It’s no secret that mama bears are way more protective and hostile whenever they have their cubs nearby.
Her job is to teach them how to live off on their own until they’re about a year and a half to two years old, and then they’re let out on their own to fend for themselves.
So, whenever you have a run in with a mama bear out in the wild, you better make sure you do your best to not make her or her cubs feel threatened, or it may end pretty badly for you.
This video is example A.
Luckily enough, the person filming is in their car so they can easily escape, but you can see a massive mama grizzly bear trudging directly towards the car in the snow, with four pretty big cubs following behind.
Now it appears that these cubs are a bit older than a year and a half to two years, and there may be a good explanation for that.
According to BBC, more and more bears being hunted by humans may contribute to mama bears hanging on to their cubs for longer than usual.
Joanie Van de Walle of the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec, Canada said:
“Because females that care for their cubs longer survive better under the hunting regulation, we say that hunting has a selective effect (it artificially determines which females are going to survive and reproduce based on their reproductive behavior).
Our hypothesis was thus that hunting regulation could favor longer maternal care in this population.
Therefore, the observed change in female reproductive behavior could be the result of the increasing hunting pressure in the population.”
However, females won’t breed again until their cubs are gone, which is why male bears (also known as boars) will sometime kills cubs in an effort to mate their mother.
Brutal? Yes, absolutely… but that’s nature for you.
Nevertheless, just look at the absolute monster size of this bear family.
Is this the biggest bear family in the woods?