Ways How to Protect Yourself from a Polar Bear

Russian bloger Sergey went to this island and here his story below:

For 4 days on Wrangel Island, we have seen 169 polar bears. Sometimes they came to us very close, but no one was hurt. At the same time, neither we, nor our guides had any weapons, except a pepper spray and rockets that no one even used.

We followed the rules designed by the most authoritative and experienced Russian scientists studying polar bears - Nikita Ovsyanikov. Nikita lives on Wrangel Island for several decades and have met lots of bears. He never carries weapons but used a pepper spray only 3 times.

I don't know whether you'll meet someday a polar bear one on one, but these simple rules can save your life when you meet any large predator.

---

Across the network:

loading...

In order to understand how to behave, you have to know something about polar bears.

1. Polar bear is a predator. It is not a teddy bear from children's store. It can kill, though looks fluffy.
2. Polar bears are very careful. To hunt, they need to be healthy. A wounded bear would not be able to feed itself, so bears come into battle only in extreme cases. In 99% of cases they prefer to run away if they see that you do not run first.
3. Polar bears are very curious. There is not enough food in the Arctic, and bears come to explore everything that is unusual. So if a polar bear comes to you, the most likely, it's because of curiosity, and not in order to eat you.
4. Polar bears do not consider human beings as food. They eat mainly seals which are caught resting on the ice.
5. Polar bears are well aware of body language. It means, they understand well if you're afraid or not.
6. Polar bears have a herd reflex: it means, if one bear run, the others will run, too, not even understanding why they ran away. Just to be on the safe side.

A contact with a polar bear can occur for three reasons:

1. You provoke it yourself, for example, deciding to feed a bear with a condensed milk, as explorers loved to do. Or come closer to make selfie.

This picture was taken at Cape Schmidt in Chukotka

Let's block ads! (Why?)