Polite bear is polite.
h/t: Paula Kirby
Seven seconds of fun
August 15, 2012 • 5:03 pm
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Love it!
There are other clips of the same bear in the video selection shown afterwards if 7 seconds isn’t enough.
The title of the video is incorrect. The bear is waving good-bye.
What’s the over/under on that bear being trained to do that by people, who probably should know better, tossing it food for it’s ‘tricks’.
Funny bear is funny.
What’s the origin of this meme,
“x y is x”?
Is it an advertising slogan?
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/x-y-is-x-redundant-adjectives-are-redundant
Says that it came from the Simpsons, popularized on 4chan.
Meme is dated 1999?!
Old meme is old.
That’s just sad…
Now I wish I had a bear friend. 🙁
Visitors to Switzerland used to see, in Bern, this kind of behaviour on display at the old Bear Pit; with some dismay, if they happened to be true bear-lovers. Older bears knew to sit down and wave in exchange for carrots and apples thrown down by the visitors, which they would catch with amazing dexterity.
The subclause is intentionally ambiguous, because the bears have, on occasion, caught the odd visitor, too. Such hapless victims fell into three categories: unlucky, idiots, or a combination of both; and always into the pit.
Since 2009, this rather degrading spectacle is no longer common, as the bears have now a larger Bear Park on the bank of the river Aare at their disposal, and find themselves at eye-level with their human visitors.
Bears can be great fun. But the real fun is to watch them in their natural habitat, or at least something resembling it. Bears are neither plush-teddies nor clowns, and shouldn’t be treated as such. A careless attitude may be quite deadly. And I must confess that, more often than not, my sympathies are on the side of the bear who manages to even the score with the humans.
Occam[@7]’s last sentence reminds me of aone of my favorite bumper stickers, seen on a parked car in Rockville, Maryland. It had a picture of Smokey the Bear (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smokey_the_Bear)carrying a rifle, and the words:
“Support the Right to Arm Bears!”
This also reminds me of a poem by Beat nature poet Gary Snyder, “Smokey the Bear Sutra,” with its refrain:
“And if anyone is threatened by advertising, air pollution, television, or the police, they should chant SMOKEY THE BEAR’S WAR SPELL:
DROWN THEIR BUTTS
CRUSH THEIR BUTTS
DROWN THEIR BUTTS
CRUSH THEIR BUTTS
And SMOKEY THE BEAR will surely appear to put the enemy out with his vajra-shovel.”
🙂
Fake.
It’s not a fake. It looks like it has been taken at the Olympic Game Farm in Washington State: I have visited the place many times and I have witnessed the bears doing exactly the same. They are old bears retired from Disney productions (like Grizzly Adams) and they are quite apt at looking cuddly to people (should I say they are “people-smart”?)