{"id":748470,"date":"2026-06-20T01:27:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T01:27:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/748470\/"},"modified":"2026-06-20T01:27:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T01:27:09","slug":"wildlife-expert-believes-bear-in-viral-photo-suffering-from-infection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/748470\/","title":{"rendered":"Wildlife expert believes bear in viral photo suffering from infection"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/db2cd40c-66ab-4c73-a8b6-540f2c5cae1a.jpg\" class=\"object-fit-cover\" alt=\"\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Martin Mckenzie took this photo June 15 about 25 kilometers north of La Ronge. (Image Credit: Facebook\/Martin Mckenzie)<\/p>\n<p>By Derek Cornet<\/p>\n<p>raising eyebrows <\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\tJun 19, 2026 | 4:44 PM\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>A photo taken in Northern Saskatchewan of a distressed bear on the side of the highway has caught the attention of hundreds of social media users. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The photo was taken by Martin Mckenzie near the Lac La Ronge Indian Band community of Sucker River earlier this week. People quickly began speculating on the cause of its deformity with ideas ranging from the mythical chupacabra or perhaps even a skin walker. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>A wildlife health specialist with Saskatchewan Ministry of Environment, however, believes the cause is likely due to something not so imaginative. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou can definitely see there is some hair loss on the face, a little bit on one of the front limbs as well.\u00a0This is\u00a0not uncommon\u00a0in bears. There\u00a0is\u00a0a number of different reasons for hair loss. It can\u00a0be\u00a0associated with a disease called mange, which is\u00a0caused by a variety of different mites,\u201d expert Iga Stasiak said. \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Martin Mckenzie took this photo June 15 about 25 kilometers north of La Ronge. (Image Credit: Facebook\/Martin Mckenzie)&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":748471,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,66,323],"class_list":["post-748470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=748470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748470\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/748471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=748470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=748470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=748470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}