Bears are brutal in all kinds of ways.
We’ve seen videos of them mauling wild boar and tossing large moose around, but to me, nothing is more barbaric than some male’s behavior toward a female (sow) and her cubs.
Infanticide is an unfortunate reality in the bear population. Typically, it occurs when a male comes across a female with cubs that he did not father.
Grizzly bear boars will aggressively attack sows and kill their cubs primarily as a brutal reproductive strategy known as sexually selected infanticide, though opportunistic predation also plays a role.
A nursing grizzly sow will not enter estrus (heat) while she is raising and lactating for her cubs. If a boar kills the cubs, the mother’s milk production stops and she returns to estrus, allowing the attacking male to mate with her and pass on his own genetics.
Boars generally target cubs they believe they did not sire. To protect their young, sows employ a biological counterstrategy by mating with multiple males in a single season to obscure the true paternity of the litter. This decreases the chances that a local boar will attack, as he may recognize the sow and believe the cubs are his.
Reproductive drive is not the only factor behind these attacks. Boars will also kill cubs simply because they are hungry and the cubs represent a defenseless, easy source of protein. Additionally, eliminating a cub removes a future rival that would eventually compete for the boar’s territorial food and resources.
Because male infanticide is a severe threat to their reproductive success, sows are notoriously aggressive and will fiercely fight larger and stronger males to defend their young. Sows will also deliberately alter their travel patterns to avoid boars entirely, utilizing areas with thick tree cover for escape routes or staying in areas where mature males are less likely to roam.
It’s certainly not the easiest topic to discuss, and there’s a number of videos you can find of this process in action, but the video we have today is actually somewhat of a success story.
This was taken in Spain and shows a mother brown bear and her cubs traversing a rocky cliffside when they’re approached by an angry male. Immediately the two attack each other, and a harrowing fight for both her life, and the life of her cubs, goes down with no room to retreat. When you’re on a rocky cliffside, there’ nowhere to run… and mama bears knows this so the claws come out.
At first, it looked like the larger male was winning, and he was. Seemingly having the female by the back of the neck, he was definitely in control of this fight. But the mother did everything she could to try and hold her own, if nothing else to give her cub a chance to escape…. well, until a fateful moment occurred.
Whether the she couldn’t push back on the attack any longer or the ground gave way beneath her feet, it’s hard to tell, but both bears tumbled off the cliff and began a crushing fall to the ground below. Both bears smashed into a number of jagged rocks before coming to rest in a bruised and beaten heap.
But there is an upside to this story, as the mother bear was said to have gotten up and survived the attack. The male was not so lucky and died from his injuries.
Spanish biologist Juan Carlos Blanco explained the situation in more detail:
“What we have seen is an attempt of infanticide by a male, which wants kill the cubs of the female. And the female will come into heat in the coming days and the male will be able to copulate with the female. This sexually-selected infanticide is very common behavior in bears and in many other species of mammals
The is very disturbing for us to see. There are 350 bears, they are recovering… but they are in danger.”
Yet another insane story of epic wildlife battles and another reminder to us all… don’t mess with mama bear.
