Don't Hug the Bears

They think you are food...


I guess this crazy woman is the second Berliner to hop into the polar bear area of this German zoo. Some guy snuck past the guards, hopped the fence, waded through some thorn bushes and climbed the concrete wall which surrounds the exhibit last year.

I hear that they have a bear cub raised by humans at this zoo. Knut, the cute bear cub has apparently blurred the line of which animals you can pet and which animals will disembowel you for a certain number of Germans.


I don't really have any funny banter to go along with this. The humor of folks trying to play with polar bears is pretty self evident.



This lady got a good mauling, with bites to the arms, legs and back before zoo keepers were able to fish her out.
The last guy was unscathed, they ditracted the bears with a steer leg while ushering him out of the habitat.

Any animal that one might distract with a part of some second animal which is larger than ones self is probably best given a wide swath in my book - like other side of the fence/wall/moat kind of distance.


I do appreciate the zoo's response to these incidents.
There stand is that, well, these are giant predators...if you are crazy enough to climb into a bear pit things might go wrong...and you are crazy, so the wall and security stay the same.

The bears can't get out.
The crazies can get in, but shouldn't.
That's it.

The zoo administrators recognize that the only thing broken is the synapse that keeps a sane person from scrambling into a bear pit...and that is something they cannot fix.