This video proves that black bear families are cute… but only from a distance.
I’ve said it time and time again, and I’ll say it once more: Never, under any circumstance, do you want to put yourself between a mother bear and her cubs. Bears will often try to avoid running into humans. But if they get close to their cubs? Humans become public enemy number one, even if they’re inside a vehicle.
This person who was driving along and came across a black bear and her four little cubs learned that lesson the hard way. With absolutely zero survival instincts, the person videoed themself pulling up next to the mother bear and her little ones and proceeded to say in a baby-talk voice:
“Oh my goodness. Look how cute you are!”
The cubs may be cute, but the mama bear could rip you apart if she wanted to. I’m not sure I’d classify that as cute.
These small cubs were still very much at the age where they needed to stay close to their mother, and the mama was ready to attack if necessary. Thankfully, the person in the car stayed in their car (some Yellowstone tourists aren’t so smart). But they continued to a) handle the situation way too casually and b) ignore cues from the wild animals standing feet away.
Like when the baby bears started walking away, they still treated it as if they were in a petting zoo, saying:
“Hey! There he goes! Bye.”
Yeah… the cubs were getting out of there because they knew their mother was about to go to work. They must have seen that play out a time or two.
In what ended up being somewhat of a predictive statement, you can hear the person in the passenger seat tell the driver that they were lucky it wasn’t a grizzly standing near their car, because if it was, it “would kill us.” With hindsight, they should have known that a bear of any kind that’s protecting its cubs will be just as ferocious.
Only seconds after that grizzly statement, the mother bear charged the vehicle, which prompted the person in the driver’s seat to suddenly stop using the baby talk, drive away, and say this:
“It just jumped at me and said like… stop.”
Good to know that the mama bear’s message was heard loud and clear.
Just like a horror movie, viewers watched this video and knew exactly what was going to happen. The suspense builds up from the moment the car comes to a stop, and even so, the charge by the mother bear caused a lot of social media users to jump:
“Best jump scare I’ve had in a while.”
“That bear scared the puberty into that dude.”
“You stopped… for a MAMA. BEAR? With her babies?!”
“The kids left cause they knew what was about to go down.”
“Y’all didn’t watch animal planet growing up and it shows.”
“The way I JUMPED! My heart came out of my chest.”
