iStockphoto / AmitRane1975
It has been a few years since I last watched or read Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book but I’m fairly certain that Baloo the Bear and Shere Khan the Tiger square off at some point, which is what happened in real life in this clip below.
This clip was shared by Ramesh Pandey of the Indian Forest Service who is blowing minds on X (formerly Twitter) with the footage. In it, we see a tiger and a bear crossing paths in a national park in Terai in Uttar Pradesh, India and they are both very wary of one another but it’s the bear who thinks it wants some smoke until it realizes it absolutely does not.
Thankfully for everyone watching and for the two majestic wild animals, we do not get answers to the question of ‘who would win in a fight: bear or a tiger?’ and everyone makes it out of there safely including the people filming the rare encounter.
When a tiger and a sloth bear come across in a terai jungle.
Via: Siddharth Singh pic.twitter.com/tvynvwsDeG
— Ramesh Pandey (@rameshpandeyifs) May 2, 2024
I love that the bear was like ‘I am the King of the Jungle!!!’ charging that adult tiger until it realized that it had absolutely met its match and both of them would be worse off if things escalated so they quickly both backed down.
According to Pete Thomas at FTW, this is a sloth bear. Sloth bears grow between 5 to 6 feet long and weigh between 200 to 300 pounds, on average. So this bear would have certainly met its match if it didn’t stand down after charging the tiger.