When it comes to getting food to stay alive, bears are absolutely relentless. I’ve seen videos of them killing an elk calf, climbing a tree to overtake a bald eagle’s nest, of course they’ll steal from other predators, dig through garbage, catch fish, and the list goes on and on… whatever it takes so there’s enough food on the table for their cubs.
And this is the latest example…
A trail camera outside of a wolf den in the Naliboki Forest captured footage of a bear ravaging the den while the parents were away, presumably out looking for food. Wolf dens can be anywhere from five to 18 feet deep into the ground and are incredibly difficult for outside predators to get into, so the parents probably believed the pups were secure from any outside harm.
However, in comes a brown bear who was probably was able to sniff out the pups’ scent, and it starts digging like a mad man.
According to the videographer’s blog, Zoology by Vadim Sidorovich, the bear destroyed the den for over half an hour.
“The brown bear discovered the wolf den and began destroying it. Extirpation of that by the bear took half an hour. It looks like the parent wolves were observing the bear’s action from aside, but they were afraid to approach the bear and attack it.
Right after the bear has gone the parent wolves came to the extirpated den. They looked scared. After some shy and careful inspection of the den-site, the parent wolves left the place and came back there only at night.
Also, they returned to the den-site few more nights, tried to dig and investigated the burrow-den inside and searched for their pups. Plausibly, the pups were killed and, perhaps, eaten by the bear.”
He also added that the parent wolves were looking on from afar, but were too afraid to take on the massive brown bear with just them two. Sometimes an entire pack can run off a bear, but it’s definitely a dangerous endeavor. One swipe of the paw from a bear can devastate even a ferocious predator like a wolf.
After the bear flees the scene, the parent wolves come back to the den, and they look terrified, looking around in every direction to make sure there are no other predators. Unfortunately it is believed that the bear had killed the pups inside the den, as there was no sign of them after the bear’s attack.
Nature’s brutality at its finest:
