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Study Upends Usual Narrative in Dog-vs-Bear Fights
Newser • • world
Key Points:
- A study analyzing 326 dog-bear encounters from 1901 to 2023 found that dogs initiated 54% of these encounters, challenging the notion that dogs primarily defend their owners from bears.
- Only about one-third of encounters involved dogs defending their owners, and just 9% of the time did dogs successfully alert owners to a bear's presence.
- Most encounters involved black bears rather than brown bears, with medium-sized dogs off leash 85% of the time; dogs often ran back to owners with bears following, resulting in injuries to 70% of humans in those cases.
- Researchers advise dog owners in bear country to keep their dogs under control to reduce risks to themselves, their pets, and bears.
