this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2024
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Police have shot and killed a polar bear that came ashore in northwestern Iceland, the first sighting of a polar bear there since 2016. It might have hitched a ride from Greenland on a floating iceberg.

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[–] [email protected] 82 points 1 month ago (6 children)

Here in the states, we shot a gorilla once.

It, uh, . . . It didn’t go very well for a long time after that.

Personally I’d recommend some other approach. But that’s just me.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I think there's a slight difference in a captive gorilla and wild polar bear.

I mean (unrelated but still) I think a polar bear could 1v1 a gorilla. Meaning I think a polar bear is more dangerous. Especially a hungry one, that's able to just walk into a population center.

I too wish they could've saved the bear, but I don't think people are gonna complain about this as much as with Harambe (RIP)

Like even if anaesthesia was an option, they'd still have had to give it a ride back, or build it a home. And building zoos just isn't too popular nowadays imo.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Polar bears are three times the size and weight of a silverback. They could likely prevail in a 1v2 or 1v3. 1v4 would be a fair fight.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I mean, 1v1 is easy, 1v2 maybe even, but if there's a group of silverbacks, what with being somewhat smart and sturdy themselves, I think they could occasionally even get a win.

I've never seen a gorilla irl, but I've seen a taxidermied polar bear, and holy fuck those things are big. But then I think of just how versatile opposable thumbs are and of how insanely thick gorilla muscles are.

I'm marking this as a thing I'd like to know but probably never will, what with the moral implications of setting animals on each other in blood sports.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Gorillas don't have much for protection. The bear has 4" of fat "armor". The gorillas won't be able to bite or tear flesh.

My thinking is that if the bear is able to grab one of the gorillas, it will be disabled pretty much instantly. Unless the remaining gorilla(s) can press their momentary advantage while the bear is distracted, it's just going to rip them apart one by one.

1v4, they might have enough clout to keep the bear immobilized long enough to kill it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Gorillas don't have much for protection. The bear has 4" of fat "armor". The gorillas won't be able to bite or tear flesh.

Oh yeah this is very true. But like several of them manhandling one, idk. Might be out of their capacity for coordination, though.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Yeah, with adequate coordination, the gorillas should prevail in a 1v3. But I think they tend to fight more like individuals than as a pack.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I'm just saying that the romans stopped putting bears into fights in the colloseum because it got boring - the bears qust wrecked everything else the romans could get their hands on.

Or so I've heard, I'm not a historian.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

I believe this.

And they didn't even have polar bears afaik.

Romans should've put Silverfang in the ring.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

A bear would get obliterated by an elephant, maybe even a hippo. And the Romans could get their hands on those.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I think a polar bear could 1v1 a gorilla. Meaning I think a polar bear is more dangerous.

An inuit friend once told me a polar bear could hunt, stalk, kill and eat you in about 8 minutes. I'm told the conversion from Minutes to Treadwells says it's longer, but I didn't check whether he was putting me on.

a hungry one, that’s able to just walk into a population center

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/13/churchill-canada-polar-bear-capital

It takes a lot of training and a little acceptance. Note, in the article above, the term 'medical bills', which in Canada doesn't mean "cash for care" so much as "rent and food during recovery", which aren't covered by insurance.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

What does? Living in a polar bear habitat? Did you actually read the article yourself, or did you — I presume — just Google something you thought supported your view?

“If you were to build a town today, you would never put it here,”

Because it's s place where polar bears naturally live, see? Unlike in Iceland. They're not unheard of in Iceland, but it's not their habitat.

Did you note them size of those buses they do these bear tours in?

Did you note that these people don't live alongside bears as much as in a place where there are often bears. These people don't take risks either.

“When I was growing up, it was common for conservation officers to shoot 25 bears a season,” explains the mayor, Mike Spence, who is of Cree and Scottish descent.

Culvert traps, baited with seal scent, line the perimeter of the community; bears that are caught in them are taken to a holding facility, popularly known as the polar bear jail, where they are held for up to 30 days (without food, to enhance the deterrence factor of the experience), before being drugged and helicoptered to a spot safely away from town – or, if late enough in the season, on to the sea ice.

This is a single community, in a place where it's actually feasible to anaesthetise a bear, then keep then without food in a place meant to keep bears, then fly them to a place where the bears naturally live. And it happens so often that it's something that actually warrants constant attention, again unlike in Iceland.

Youre proposing the entire country starts putting down polar bear baits and traps, and then when they work once in a decade when a bear floats down on accident, they'll fly a bear from Iceland to the Arctic?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

The inuit folk I've talked to said that sometimes they have to shoot a polar bear if it's harassing the village. When they kill one, it's not uncommon to find bullets in it from the last time it was harassing a village. Polar bears are big and scary and we are destroying their habitat.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The irony of an American lecturing another country on finding an alternative to shooting.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You don’t want to hear from the best?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Sure, but America doesn't really seem to be the best at alternatives to shooting...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Believe it or not? More shooting.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

I still think about that terrible day. once harambe passed, the world fell apart.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Wall, net, alert system, radar, video feeds, traps of some sort to relocate the bear to [some sort of arctica].

There are solutions where the bear doesn't get shot, obviously. They just cost money. That's all.

And there's the rub.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago

Yeah just make a wall around all detached houses in Iceland or build traps on the whole shore lmao

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Single combat?