Bear Stands Outside California Home Like a Human and Everyone’s Puzzled
Bears do the darndest things! Powerful apex predators though they may be, they're still oddly awkward, adorable, and sometimes just straight-up relatable. We can all sympathize with a bear's drive to find good eats and a warm place to hunker down. Sometimes, however, they go a little farther towards emulating straight-up human behavior.
Take Andy Scholes, a resident of Downieville, California who got a surprise visit from a bear cub on November 24. Seeing a bear outside of his house wasn't the odd part though- it was the bear's behavior. The cub was standing up on its hind legs just like a human being!
Well, hello! The bear cub standing outside of @andyscholes's door looked like it was there to sell him some Girl Scout Cookies! While it's not uncommon for black bears to stand on their hind legs like this, to see this little guy standing this way and even walking up to Andy's house in such an anthropomorphic manner was an unusual sight.
Andy's video also left online viewers puzzled, even conspiratorial. Immediately people began debating whether this was just a bear being silly or whether this was a human being in a bear suit (very reminiscent of the debate surrounding the Hangzhou Zoo sun bear from earlier this year).
"No visible claws, human in a good bear suit!" guessed @shadowfax655.
"Overthinker checking in... human in a good bear suit... ears not swiveling..." hypothesized @canttaketheskyfromme. Interesting theory- too bad those ears do move on closer inspection!
As you probably guessed, this bear is the genuine article, no matter how "human" its behavior. People who were a bit more familiar with bears were a bit less bewildered.
"I was walking through the snow in Tahoe and had a blonde bear stand up like that and walk towards me, it was protecting her cub. I’m lucky to be here," @j.b.nomadic recounted one bloodchilling story- definitely a lot more tense than Andy's adorable visit.
However, one TikTok viewer, @sunsetchasertx, came away with an interesting theory from this whole debate: "I'm convinced that the Bigfoot everyone claims to have seen is just an bear that was upright. They do this often."
If that's the case, Bigfoot has never looked so adorable! The more bears act like humans, the more they bewilder us. At the end of the day though, Andy's bear cub was just doing what bears do: probably looking for its next snack!
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