pet bear

Remember the Old Man That Fought Off a Bear to Save His Dog? They Think It Was Somebody's Illegal Pet Bear

The investigation is almost complete. Could this be for real?

Just last month, we published a piece about a 68-year-old man in Minnesota who fought off a black bear to save his dog. He was bitten, but both the man and the dog survived. Shortly after that attack, the same black bear attacked two other men just down the road. Wildlife officers were dispatched to put the bear down. Shortly after that, the bear was sent off for study. Now the results are coming in. It turns out, it was likely someone's pet bear they set free.

The investigation is coming to this conclusion because the bear had abnormalities that a wild bear shouldn't have had. First off, the bear had a hairless ring around its neck that resembled a collar. It also had its back claws seemingly filed down. As you can probably guess yourself, it sounds like it was a pet.

One other abnormality with this bear is that it had extreme swelling in its brain. The researchers all concluded that this swelling could have made the bear hyper aggressive for weeks before the attacks occurred. This also leads the investigators to believe the bear contracted some sort of virus from an enclosure with other animals.

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More information is coming forward, but one thing is for sure, there is more to this story than just a sick bear.

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