Seeing as another thread got into some bear talk, I thought I'd post a link to an article I read today on a black bear encounter.

[url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/animalia/wp/2016/06/21/i-might-die-how-a-marathon-runner-outsmarted-the-bear-that-almost-killed-her/][/url]

So we have a marathon runner that ended up being in the wrong place at the wrong time; near a momma bear and cub. Turns out the bear had 3 cubs, but I guess she only noticed one. The title is a bit misleading, as it wasn't that she did anything to really outsmart the bear, but it's an interesting thing to look at.

Normally, in a black bear attack, you don't play dead. But in this case the woman did. It's probably an example of an exception to "the rule" as the bear was protecting her cubs, and a running person was seen as a threat. The woman played dead, the threat was gone, and the bear went back to her cubs. That's a big difference than walking along and seeing a bear with cubs. You have that one chance to slowly go away and not seem a threat to the bear. Unfortunately, the runner didn't have that option.

What really saddens me is that they killed the bear. It's not like the bear targeted the woman and attacked her, it reacted as any bear would have seeing someone running around her cubs. Normally, a black bear will attack when it wants to eat you (very rare), which is why you don't play dead, but this was not part of this bear's behaviour. I really doubt that this instance would even make the bear more susceptible to attacking people. To me it was just plain bear reactions that I see as normal.

Sad story all around.