iStockphoto / USO
The only reasonable explanation for what is going on in this viral video below is Russians have never been told ‘don’t play with your food,’ or rather, the wild bears in Russia have never been informed that it’s a faux pas.
A video posted by ‘SailorJerriTheDogTrainer’ on Instagram has racked up millions of views in just two days and it’s easy to see why because the video is nearly unbelievable. The caption on the video claims a pet owner lost their husky so they used a drone to find their lost dog and when they found the pup it was frolicking and playing with a sleuth of bears.
At first, I assumed the husky was being held captive by the bears but it appears to have free reign to move around.
The comments on the original Instagram post are mostly from fellow dog people cracking jokes about how the husky will have some wild stories to tell its friends.
Nobody is offering up any reasonable explanation for what might be going on here but after what feels like a lifetime of working on the Internet I stick to the adage that if something appears too good to be true, it probably isn’t. There’s something off about this video. Maybe the bears aren’t fully wild? Maybe they’re domesticated? The fact that this is purported to have occurred in Russia is a red flag right out of the gate.
Nevertheless, the footage is pretty awesome so let’s watch it again:
There are really no known instances of bears getting along with wolves. Someone in a TikTok comment suggested that bears will adopt/tolerate a lone wolf that’s been separated from its pack. An old NatGeo article linking to a 2021 Instagram post shows wolves ‘tolerating’ bears and not the other way around.
I can’t help but think my Anatolian Shepherd-Great Pyrenees puppy would also try and play with bears. She’s supposed to be a livestock guardian dog but the only thing she wards away are rabbits and lizards.