The American black bear is the world\u2019s most numerous bear species, with an estimated 750,000 to 950,000 living in Canada and the US. They tend to congregate in groups, unlike other bears that are more solitary.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This, together with their numbers, makes them the \u2018bear most likely to be spotted\u2019 on a wilderness walk in North America. They also like hanging round campsites, raiding tents and pulling the doors off cars to find food. Although they generally try hard to avoid humans, many YouTube videos bear witness (pardon the pun) to bears that have been caught on CCTV in people\u2019s gardens, exploring the decking and sometimes enjoying a splash in the family\u2019s paddling pool.\u00a0<\/p>\n
American blacks are not too large \u2013 standing perhaps 2m (6ft) tall if they rear up \u2013 but they are muscly and strong and will attack if they feel threatened, especially by a hiker with a dog. They are not as aggressive as some of the brown bear species, but because there are a lot of them about they inevitably get involved in people conflicts more than other types of bear.<\/p>\n
Statistics produced by the North American Bear Center record 61 people having been killed by\u00a0black bears\u00a0since 1900. If that doesn\u2019t sound a lot, be assured that there are many, many more instances of people being mauled if they don\u2019t manage to evade an attack. However, the bear\u2019s aim is normally to see off an invader to protect its cubs, not kill it. They certainly don\u2019t see people as food. Death is an unfortunate consequence of people being more fragile than rival bears.\u00a0<\/p>\n
So you have a good chance of surviving an American black attack, but it will be like being hit by a grand piano with teeth and claws and you won\u2019t escape unscathed!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The American black bear is the world\u2019s most numerous bear species, with an estimated 750,000 to 950,000 living…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":218537,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[61,60,82,263],"class_list":{"0":"post-218536","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218536\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/218537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}