Don’t you hate when you’re on a hike and trying to get some fresh air and a random bear wanders up to make friends?
A group of women walking through Chipinque Ecological Park in San Pedro Garza García, Mexico was approached by a black bear in July and that encounter went viral.
The women were significantly less terrified that you might expect!
The bear looked fairly young, but that’s no reason not to show some caution.
They did stop when the bear approached, but it wasn’t clear that this was going to be a friendly encounter. The animal sniffed and inspected one of the women, but everyone just sort of stuck around looking amused.
According to The Humane Society, they were smart not to run away.
But they also didn’t do much to protect themselves.
The right thing to do?
“Stand and face the bear directly. Never run away from or approach him. Make yourself look as big as possible by spreading your arms or, better yet, a coat. Make as much noise as possible by yelling, banging pots and pans or using other noisemaking devices.”
They were likely a bit too stunned to do that, but after getting a good sniff AND a swat from the bear, you’d think some sort of preservation instinct would kick in.
Eventually, the bear decides it’s thoroughly unimpressed with the hikers and just sort of saunters away while those recording laugh it off.
It could have easily ended in a different way though.
A second video shows the encounter from a different angle and we can at least hear some more panic. Not from the women – but from a man looking on recording with his phone camera, oddly enough.
While he says “no, no, no” he also does nothing to intervene.
When the bear stands up, she doesn’t look terrified.
There’s a bear within clawing distance of her face – and we are so confused and her nonchalance.
But then one of the women does something even more unthinkable.
With a BEAR standing next to her, she breaks out her phone and takes a selfie – and the bear leans in for it!
That’s going to be a hell of a shot for the ‘gram!
Here, take a closer look:
This can’t be the first bear selfie since, according to Bored Panda, the government of Nuevo Leon has issued the following advice on how to act in the presence of a black bear that includes selfie etiquette:
“Stay calm, never come between a baby and its mother, don’t feed them, take shelter when watching them, avoid photographing and taking selfies with them.”
And don’t worry, we have the selfie. You knew that wouldn’t stay secret very long.
We’ve had some questionable ideas in our lives, but we don’t feel so bad about them now.
Millions of people have watched the videos on Twitter alone after they quickly went viral, spreading to all other social media platforms.
The woman remains unidentified – and that’s probably for the best since she’d probably be getting a lot of unsolicited life advice right about now.
Park rangers wanted to capture the daring bear so it didn’t cause more problems, but over 10,000 people quickly signed a petition to leave it alone since the park is its home and the people were on its territory.
Apparently bears are a common sight on this particular trail which means we’ll be crossing it off our “must hike” list immediately.
We’ll happily pass on the possibility of a death-defying bear selfie and just use Photoshop instead if we really need to see what we’d look like with a furry pal.
You can scroll down below to see both videos.
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SUSTO 👀en Chipinque en Mty NL. Cada vez es más frecuente ver osos en la zona de chipinque que entran a casas o se topan con humanos. Que TEMPLE de esta jovencita 😱 pic.twitter.com/ruyjXvWRZo
— lázaro Ríos (@lzaroRos5) July 18, 2020
Otro ángulo de la #SritaTemole se ve muy claro la selfie. Ojalá la comparta… pic.twitter.com/2bCJdC4hDd
— lázaro Ríos (@lzaroRos5) July 18, 2020
