BLACK BEARS: ARE THEY DANGEROUS?
Black bears are far more docile than grizzly bears. Of course, any
animal that can grow be up to 900 pounds has the potential to be
dangerous, and is easily physically capable of harming a human if it
wants to, but most likely won't have any reason to and won't bother.
Even if you live in bear country and have black bears all around you,
you are very unlikely to be harmed by a black bear. Black bears are shy
and timid and are just as much, if not more afraid of being hurt by you
than you are of them, (for good reason) and it's not in their best
interest to hurt you at all.
You are literally millions of times more likely to be killed by a
car, by lightning, by a dog, or even by another human! Even when in the
middle of bear country.
Black bears are so much like gorillas, in so many ways. Both took
somewhat similar paths in evolution to become heavily-built, highly
intelligent arboreal mammals, and interestingly human misconceptions of
them has taken a similar path. People for a long time believed that
gorillas were savage, man-eating apes, it was only when Diane Fossey
discovered that they were gentle vegetarians. Much is true the same for
black bears. About 70% of their diet consists of plant matter, and black
bear attacks on humans are extremely rare, and when it does occur it's
almost always solely because they felt threatened by us and were in some
way treated irresponsibly by a person.
For more on just how dangerous black bears actually are check out:
http://www.bear.org/SlideShows/HowDangerous/Slide_01.html
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