A video of a polar bear attack which was repelled with a couple of long sticks or pipes has been going viral, on and off, for three years. It seems to have first appeared in 2020. Some sites claim the event happened in Quebec, Canada. Any help in identifying the location and person/people involved would be appreciated. The video is 12 seconds long.
The site seems to be a research station of some type. There is an antenna mast, probably for communication, at the upper middle of the images and a rectangular shelter with a door at the corner and what may be an instrument or communications mounting stub coming out of the roof at the left upper corner.
The charging bear is wary of the long pipe/stick which the man is pointing at the bears nose/chest. The long objects are likely some type of light metal pipe or conduit, because of their uniform width, length (about 10 feet), and straight geometry. There is a dog in the video, which appears briefly on the middle left side.
The man with the poles/pipes shoves the end of the pipe at the charging bear, which is abruptly putting on the brakes as it is hit by the pipe/pole. After retreating, the bear comes back. The man swings/flings the second pole at the bear, which hits the bear on the front legs. The bears retreat, and we do not see them any more.
Consider if the man had a spear instead of the pole. The bear could have sustained a deadly chest wound if the man had used slightly different tactics at the beginning. If he had waited a fractional second for the bear to get a yard/meter closer, and thrust into the chest cavity the blow could easily be deadly. This video helps explain how the Russian sailors were able to kill 10 polar bears with lances/spears while they were shipwrecked on Svalbard in the 1740s. The sailors did not have a dog, but they had each other. A thrust from the side with a spear would be deadly.
Polar bears tend to be solitary, except for sows with a cub or cubs and pairs of bears during mating season. It is unclear which this pair is.
A spear/lance thrust to penetrate to the lungs/heart of a bear is the best chance for a deadly strike. The heart/lungs are protected by the ribs/sternum, so a blade needs to be able to reach about 1-2 feet into the bear to inflict a deadly wound, or to make more than one wound. The heart and lungs on bears are further back than on deer, and closer to the midline of the body. Any good hole to both lungs will probably kill the bear, often as quickly as a hole in the heart.
We do not know how the video was filmed. The frame follows the action, but smoothly, and with limited travel. It might be held by another human, or remotely operated from inside the cabin/shelter.
From study of the descriptions of polar bear predatory attacks on humans, this is a typical sort of polar bear attack. Because the bears are not familiar with the strange human prey, they do not charge all-out, but are wary of possibly being injured, a form of prey-testing.
This gives humans a good opportunity to ready a weapon and mount an effective defense.
©2024 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.
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