{"id":863823,"date":"2026-09-28T18:42:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-28T18:42:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/863823\/"},"modified":"2026-09-28T18:42:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-28T18:42:08","slug":"study-upends-usual-narrative-in-dog-vs-bear-fights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/863823\/","title":{"rendered":"Study Upends Usual Narrative in Dog-vs-Bear Fights"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n Dog-versus-bear tales tend<\/a> to go viral\u2014but a new analysis suggests the reality of what unfolds is different than most imagine. Researchers combed through 326 documented dog-bear encounters from 1901 to 2023 and found that dogs initiated more than half of them, or 54%, reports the New York Times<\/a>. In only about a third of encounters did the dog come to its owner’s defense. And by the researchers’ tally in the Journal of Wildlife Management<\/a>, in only 9% of the encounters did the dog successfully alert its owner to a bear’s presence. \n <\/p>\n


\n “If you think a house pet is likely going to be your bear\u2014not only detector but deterrent\u2014you might want to think twice about that,” lead study author Tom Smith of Brigham Young University tells High Country News<\/a>. His team found that black bears were involved far more often than brown bears, and that most of the dogs were medium-size and off leash\u2014in fact, they were off leash 85% of the time. Dogs also have a habit of sprinting back to their owners with an angry bear in tow, and when that happened, 70% of the humans were hurt. The study’s bottom line for dog owners in bear country is blunt: Control your dog, or you may be increasing the risk for you, your pet, and the bear. \n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dog-versus-bear tales tend to go viral\u2014but a new analysis suggests the reality of what unfolds is different…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":863824,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[19122,21595,2681,79,201],"class_list":["post-863823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-bears","tag-discoveries","tag-dogs","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=863823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863823\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/863824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=863823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=863823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=863823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}