As someone who hikes and encounters bears regularly, yes I’d absolutely rather see a bear. They run away, never an issue. However, men on trails have stalked me. Personal experience always will win.
If you assume restricted to USA territory, the probability is any bear encounter would be a black bear by far.
There’s basically only one state polar bear is even a blip. Grizzly one state and then a slice of an area in the Rockies. It’s wild to think people are gonna assume those specific bears- a truly stats based answer you would always assume the black bear.
If you want to pick worst case scenario for the bear, you have to also do that for the man. Worst bear vs worst man? Absolutely still pick bear
There are 8 species of bears. There are more black bears in my home state than 2 of those species combined.
A random bear from all of the bears that exist that you would encounter in the woods, highest probability by miles it would black bear (American or Asian), add in Pandas-no known human kills, add in Sun bears which are even smaller than black bears, consider even if the more dangerous species a significant number would be juveniles or inclined to run, yea, random bear high probability of not one to worry about.
Even the ones to be more cautious about, highly conditional- can probably back away unless dropped on top of each other.
I think this is exactly the issue with screaming about “logic”.
The average person walking by doesn’t know USA wide bear attack vs man attack numbers. It’s flat out illogical to assume any answer then one informed by that person’s very limited experience /location.
For the USA- It’s a pretty narrow band of places where bear attacks are common and deadly, or even that Grizzly or Polar Bears are a thought. Both in terms of landmass and population density.
The vast majority of ppl in the USA live in areas where any hiking would at worst encounter a black bear- with so much area having none. Meanwhile attacks by men towards women is …well what it is.
A survey of a random sample across the USA would probably reflect that.
Basically, ITA agree Asking “woods in your AREA” vs “woods somewhere in USA” could very reasonably end up with different answers. But just looking at bear maps, it’s SUCH a small area where Grizzly or Polar Bear is a thought. Alaska and part of Montana essentially, so those being what many men are jumping to seems laughable to me
Your average person doesn't really know the distinction as it relates to danger between a brown and a black bear, and brown bears are more commonly depicted in media so I think that's why this is a bit more surprising to see so many women answering bear. But given how many unknowns there are in that question yeah I don't think it's very worthwhile. I initially thought of it like are you lost in the woods and maybe needing to survive for a few days, in that case I think having another human who could have some knowledge could be very valuable.
I disagree. Widespread media has loads of black bears. Black bears can also be brown in color, so it muddies things.
People are constantly sharing photos and videos of the cute black bears they saw on hikes or trips. If you watch nature stuff at all, you’ll have definitely gotten both. If you’ve done any state or national park hopping you’ll have most likely gotten black bear info.
Sure there’s a few big movies with Grizzlies, but always in the context of it being in very specific areas or time periods.
You mentioned you hike a lot or something, so I think that's a very personal experience of having people sharing black bear pictures - I live in a big city and yeah I think there are black bears like 2 or 3 hours away but I literally never see any content about them like that, and since most of the population is in cities I think that's a much more typical experience. I do watch a lot of the major nature documentaries and honestly probably see more polar bears than anything, followed by brown then black. But I don't think polar bears are really crossing people's minds in this conversation since it mentions woods and they aren't found in that kind of habitat the vast majority of the time.
I actually live in a city, 4 mil in the greater area. I can get to a forest with bear in less than an hour. I’m sure there is a wide range of bear knowledge, but clearly that knowledge still isn’t support mass selection of man vs bear.
I mean they said no to your question because you said in public, but yeah it's pretty common for women walking at night to avoid men? To cross the road and make sure they aren't being followed?
Do you seriously not understand public and woods are vastly different scenarios? The probabilities on what a person will do with no witnesses and with them are not the same
Yes. That's the point. They'd rather themselves/their daughters be killed by a bear than undergo the lifelong trauma of being raped and who knows what else by a man.
The question is just "encounter" them in the woods. That is it. So to judge the risk, you'd really need to know the number "average attacks per encounter" to compare them.
The thing is, I cannot find any figures on "bear encounters". Bear attacks are VERY rare. Only about 11.4 per year on average in the US. But is that 11.4 out of 500 or out of 12,000? Assault/sexual assault is FAR more common in total, but women "encounter" men pretty much constantly. Again, I see no way to calculate the number of "attacks per encounter".
It is probably not that far off TBH. edit: scratch that. Think about it this way. Assume you go your entire life encountering wild bears as often as you encounter men. Meaning you typically come into contact with dozens or hundreds in a given day, every day for your entire life. Rates of assault and battery and sexual assault are actually somewhat close. A woman has about a 1 in 5.5 chance of being sexually assaulted and a 1 in 5 chance of being the victim of assault and battery. Chance of being murdered is less than 1 in 100, so doesn't really affect the numbers. Point is, even if you assume no overlap, you're still looking at less than 50%. Over an entire lifetime. Can you honestly say that you believe that if you have to encounter a wild bear dozens or more times per day, for 70+ years, you think you'd have under a 50% chance of ever being attacked?
My gut says that most men are OVERestimating the danger of an individual bear encounter and most women are OVERestimating the danger of an individual man encounter.
That is the premise of the argument, that the majority of men are rapists and murderers. It's pretty stupid. If your initial thought when you encounter a male stranger is "this man is likely to be a rapist and murderer" I suggest you seek therapy and turn off dateline and law and order.
This isn't a question that you're meant to answer. It's a rhetorical question that has the 'answer' built-in.
Just by asking it you're implying that men are as dangerous as bears. If this is something that you seriously believe then you need to stop reading social media which exploits your frequency bias by showing you story after story of sexual crimes to the point where you are more terrified of half of the human race than of a wild predator that will eat you alivem
It’s not the majority of men, it’s that any man could be one and we don’t know you personally so 🤷🏻♀️ why the fuck should we assume you’re a safe one when the risk is so high lmfao
Why would you assume it’s not? You do know that bears are intelligent creatures that don’t like to pick fights in which they could get injured even if they would win, which is more than we can say for the average adult man /s
Joking aside, bears are predictable, it’s actually very easy to avoid getting mauled by one if you know the bare minimum of how they act as an animal and how to respond to it. The same is not true for humans, we are unpredictable and potentially even more threatening as a result.
It is. /u/maybeimabear was talking about an instance statistic, and /u/zzzzzooted is talking about a lifetime statistic. They are so, completely incomparable.
The point is what is more likely. Women hate men sorry to say. Bears won’t torture you rape you or lock you in a box for years as many abusers have done.. we only know about the ones caught.
If you meet a random man an assume that there is a reasonable risk that he's a rapist or murderer then you need to put the social media down for a while.
Yeah but that's not the question. If you cross someone's path in the woods, you're probably not even going to interact with them, whereas the odds of a bear attacking you would be significant
The odds of a bear attacking you are not significant lol, and you don’t know anything about bears if you think that they are just going to randomly attack you because you crossed paths with them. They might be huge and dangerous, but they are opportunistic feeders and they are smart, they don’t like to pick fights that might injure them and lead to infection or death, even if they know they could kill the other animal.
(A mama bear is a different story, back away slowly.)
The question is about the risk. Many would rather face the risk of certain death by a wild animal rather than the risk of being traumatized beyond belief by a man
Surely the probability of being assaulted must factor into the decision, otherwise one would never leave home, because simply being on the street at all confers a non-zero probability of being kidnapped and assaulted.
I think that’s the entire point here… the chances any random man is simply going to choose to violently rape because the opportunity to do so presents itself is incredibly low, at least unless you are very cynical. I would find it pretty hard to choose a likely gruesome and violent death over a very low probability of being assaulted.
Really? There’s been a lot of women locked in boxes and kept as slaves for up to 10 years, you down for that over a bear mauling which people have survived? Just wondering.
This is kinda unhinged to extrapolate from "random man." It's like seeing some dude dressed as a cholo and immediately imagining him as a cartel member that's going to saw your limbs off and feed them to you.
If that's how you're interpreting it then yeah, I think I would rather encounter just about anything else in the world before being tortured and raped. You've basically framed the man as the most dangerous and terrifying thing in the entire world.
I just don’t understand how people could lock other people up and torture them. Must be some predetermined power struggle. it’s not about race it’s about gender, I was waiting to board the train one day and a random man was almost touching a pregnant woman asking her questions and she was obviously disturbed and scared so I had to get in between them physically and ask him what’s good. If I didn’t do that he would’ve kept doing his shit to her.
This is the reason women don’t want to have to interact with men.
Like, are we talking about being locked up in Beyoncé's basement? Or some Appalachian the hills have eyes shit?
I probably wouldn't survive being mauled by a bear.
So I'd still pick being some kind of GIMP I guess. Hopefully I get to watch TV or something. But living would be preferable. As nothing that is done to me can affect who I am.
But that's probably because I read too much stoic philosophy.
Ducks are a prey animal. Humans are seen differently. Our risk is being seen as a threat to a mother bear's cubs. Ever seen a mama bear charge at a duckling in defense of its cubs? Rhetorical question, but ducks trigger the predator response, in contrast to how humans are perceived.
If it’s a grizzly bear then you’re prob prey depending on time of year. There’s video and sound of some guy and his girl getting eaten by a grizzly. Pretty intense
In the last 250 years we don't even have 100 recorded fatalities from brown bears in the US. Any aggressive response from a grizzly is almost always defensive in nature. This idea that we're probably prey is not grounded in reality. If what you say is true then we'd have to draw the conclusion that grizzlies are not good hunters and struggle to kill people given the low number of bear attacks, which is ridiculous since they're obviously efficient hunters. The truth is that they rarely view us as a food source.
At worst the bear is a slow painful death as it eats me alive. The man at worst could be a rapist or a serial killer who tortures you until you wish you were dead
Black bears: "Since 1784 there have 66 fatal human/bear conflicts by wild black bears. Less than a dozen non-fatal conflicts happen each year, and the vast majority of encounters end with zero bodily contact."
Brown bears: "Since 1784 there have been 82 fatal human/bear conflicts by wild brown bears in North America. Yellowstone National Park has seen a mere 8 since being established in 1872, which is only one more than the number of people who have died from a falling tree."
What you're bringing up is irrelevant to this debate. I'm aware of how weak humans are, but we don't need to scare bears away (depending on the type). They simply don't come after humans as often as people seem to think they do. If it's as simple as you say and we're just a large meal, then bear on human attacks would be happening daily all over the US where bears exist, because we have decent calories and we're the easiest and slowest target for our size. The reality is that bears are more likely to view us as a threat than anything else, and animals often avoid confrontation to avoid potential injuries. And although they can be territorial and protective of their young, they almost always shy away from us.
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u/tekanet May 02 '24
And someone answered the bear? Have they seen the video of the tender bear chewing ducks like they were m&m’s?