CAUTION: You may get nauseas watching this.
No, not because a massive bear is mauling a much smaller animal to death, or anything violent at all for that matter.
It’s because a bear is basically sh*ttin’ out a mile of tapeworms.
I’ll admit, this is one of only a couple of times I’ve seen something like this, but it’s pretty wild to know what could be living inside a bear at anytime, and it’s also wild (and also disgusting) to see how the bear’s body naturally processes something like this.
In the video, you can see the bear lean up on a truck, and then casually make its way out into the road, all while passing a ginormous string of tapeworms that appears to span several feet in length.
Just see for yourself:
In a previous video posted by the popular (and awesome) Instagram account, Nature Is Metal, they explain the process of bears passing tapeworms:
“Bears that depend on the yearly salmon run often become hosts for these alien looking organisms that lodge themselves into the bruin’s intestinal tract.
The life cycle of the broad fish tapeworm is a flat circle: eggs are released into the wild via the droppings of a host bear, they wash into the rivers and streams where crustaceans gobble them up. Next, salmon chow down on these compromised mud bugs and finally (you guessed it) the bears – who are able to crush 20+ salmon per day at the run’s peak – do just that.
The tapeworm larva then latches on to the interior wall of the bear’s stomach and this parasitic life cycle begins anew. The adult tapeworm keeps itself alive by deriving nutrients through its skin from what the bear eats, and as you can see from the above clip, one bear can host multiple parasites at one time.
Humans can get these as well by consuming uncooked salmon.”
Just the thought of possibly being able to contract tapeworms, and going through this myself is enough for me to never touch salmon again for the rest of my life.
