There are likely few things that could brighten your day up as much as a friendly bear waving at you.
We’re not talking Yogi here.
We’re talking real live massive brown bears.
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You’ll often see viral videos of these big brown bears plopped down on their butts while people drive by and toss bread at them.
The bears will often flawlessly snatch the bread mid-air and eat it up.
Then wave at the passersby as a thank you for the carb-loaded snack.
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It’s a pretty darn adorable sight.
Samson Lee and his lady friend were pretty stoked when they took a trip to see the waving bears themselves.
“Oh, it’s so impressive. So, good,” the girl squealed with delight as the bear walked up to the fence and sat on his hindquarters to look at them as she held a piece of bread in her hand.
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“Hello, hi,” she coos at the bear who eventually waves back at her.
You can tell he just wants a piece of damn bread.
So, she finally throws it to him and he immediately catches it with total precision.
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“Whoa, nice catch! Yeah,” Lee says as they wave and drive away.
It was a pretty sweet catch.
And that chubby brown bear was chill AF.
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That 23-second video ended up garnering more than 6.5 million views on YouTube.
“Went to see the waving bears, did not disappoint,” Lee wrote in the video’s caption.
Just about anyone can have this fun experience with the waving bears at Olympic Game Farm in Sequim, WA.
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There are all sorts of animals at Olympic Game Farm where visitors are allowed to drive through and take a 45 minutes to 1 hour long ride to see all different animals on the farm.
They can also purchase a loaf of bread to feed the animals.
The farm was originally called Disney’s Wild Animal Ranch. It was a place where Disney’s animal actors would come for breaks during filming.
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They would also be trained and cared for at the facility which was closed to the public at that time.
Eventually, the demand for animal actors waned and the park was opened up to visitors.
Now the farm survives off of funds made from tourists and donations. It’s not an easy task since feeding just one of their bears can cost $500 to $1,000 a day. They had 19 bears on site in 2017, according to Vice.
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“Several of the animals are either rehomed, come as overflow from other licensed facilities, or have been received from other properly licensed individuals,” their website says.
Some of the animals are even descendants of those who lived on the farm when it was first opened.
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The bears have become some of their biggest attractions thanks to the viral videos of them waving.
But the farm’s owners insist that their bears aren’t trained to wave. They do it all on their own.
“It’s something they’ve always done,” Robert Beebee, President of Olympic Game Farm, told Motherboard.
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“The [original bears] were hand-raised here in the house with my grandparents, so they were really used to people. And they had some other training off and on. But waving was not [part of that training].”
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“The bears would do something funny or cute, and the tourists would get excited and throw bread out. It only took a little while for the bears to put two and two together, and say, ‘If I do this, I can get that.’ Bears are pretty smart, and they can figure things out pretty quickly.”
Check out one of their smart bears making an awesome catch in the video below.
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