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Purveyor, Fine Asian Porn
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Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: San Francisco Bay Area
Posts: 38,323
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Bear attacks on humans annually are less common than lightning strikes of humans (no kidding), and the number of deaths by dogs, man's best friend, is far greater than the average couple of bear attacks in North America that happen each year.
To here the gimp Pathfinder call it, he and his equally gimpy Bowser, need a 50 cal gun to safely walk in the woods where he lives for fear of the every present imminent threat of attack and mauling by a ferocious man-hungry bear. 
They should give you a fucking medal for such bravery, Elmer.  
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Bear Attack Statistics
You are 12 times more likely to die of a bee sting than a bear attack (120 times more likely compared to a black bear)
You are 10 times more likely to die from a dog attack than a bear attack (45 times more likely compared to a black bear attack)
1 person out of 16,000 commits murder but only 1 grizzly bear out of 50,000 ever kills someone and only 1 black bear out of one million does. So people are much more dangerous than bears! Fear people and respect bears.
There are about 750,000 black bears in North America and on average there is less than one black bear killing per year.
For each person killed by a black bear attack there are 13 people killed by snakes, 17 by spiders, 45 by dogs, 120 by bees, 150 by tornadoes, 374 by lightning, and 60,000 by humans.
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Why are people so afraid of bear attacks?
There is a fundamental misconception about predator species that creates a false sense of fear.
Most people confuse being a predator species with being predatory towards humans. Predators often have a greater physical potential to harm, injure or kill humans - sharp claws, carnivore teeth, large body size. But the key word here is "potential". Just because an animal has the physical potential to harm a human does not mean that it actually does harm humans.
Many horses are as large as a bear, and if they were to turn violent they could charge, stomp, kick and bite you to death. But we don't ever think - run for your life! - when we see a horse. Wild peccaries, which were quite common where I lived in AZ, have the longest teeth of any carnivore in the Americas. Yet most Arizonans don't think twice about javelina, or arm themselves, when tromping around the desert in the dark. These are clear examples of how our perception about the physical potential of an animal is about a lot more than just its physical presence.
Most predators have never used humans as a food source, and no predators have had humans as their primary food source. What this means, quite simply, is that predators do not see humans as food. Let's look at a simple example about predator diet using North American humans (yes, humans are classified as a predator species).
Many North American humans eat meat such as chickens, pigs, cows, and turkeys. We are also surrounded in our every day lives by lots of other examples of potentially edible meat - pigeons, dogs, cats, ravens, rats, parakeets, hamsters.
But since these types of animals are not our typical food sources (we were not fed these animals as children, we have never tasted this animal, we have never seen any other humans eating these animals), we do not kill and consume them just because they are in our presence. Well, bears and other predators act the same way.
All predators kill and eat the foods that they know, that they are familiar with, that they have had success hunting in the past, that they have tasted before. The mere presence of a human does not mean that a bear will decide to eat humans. Although ridiculous movies like The Edge would have you believe otherwise, bears are not predatory towards humans.
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American black bears can run more than 30 mph, and their compact muscles make them much stronger than people. But during the past 110 years, noncaptive black bears have killed just 63 people in the U.S. and Canada, according to a study published this year.
Naturally, as the human population has grown, so has the number of fatal bear attacks?but they still average fewer than two per year. More people are killed by bees. By spiders. By dogs. By lightning.
?More people are killed in vending machine accidents,? says Andrew Page, senior director of The HSUS?s Wildlife Abuse Campaign.
In contrast, in the U.S., more than 33,000 black bears are killed each year by hunters, who in 32 states can legally go after them for trophies like bear heads and bearskin rugs.
The animals are killed by some of the most inhumane and unsporting methods imaginable. Hunters commonly lure them with bait like soured corn or piles of garbage?old donuts and cooking grease?then shoot at point-blank range.
Some states allow hunters to fit dogs with GPS collars; after the dogs tree a bear, the hunter follows the signal to an easy, and terrified, target. In certain places it?s legal to hunt bears in the spring, when mothers? deaths leave orphaned cubs to starve.
Maine allows people to catch bears with painful wire snares and then finish them off with a pistol. South Carolina even permits people to test out dogs on tame, tethered bears who have had their claws and teeth removed; the trials take place carnival-style, in front of crowds of spectators.
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