How Come Russians Have Bears As Pets

There's a bear living near every single Russian household. Just ask any internet user, they'll confirm. And, funny enough, we Russians actually play up to this stereotype. How do Russians tame these formidable predators? And who came up with the idea in the first place? Sorry, Leo. Taming adult bears was always a terrible notion. But people cared for orphaned cubs. Mama bears sometimes abandon their children if they sense humans anywhere near their den. This is not surprising. In the animal kingdom, a grown female bear takes care of herself first. She can have more children next year, but if she dies now, her current cubs will almost surely perish too. Humans are sometimes forced to kill bears. Bears protecting their offspring. Surprise encounters with such an angry animal sadly leave little choice for those carrying a gun. A much less ethical reason to leave cubs motherless is hunting. Some hunt for entertainment, others for money. Bears' paws and gallbladders rake in more cash than their skin even. These are precious ingredients in oriental medicine. In some cases, poachers smuggle live bears into Asian bile farms. All of this happens to fully grown bears, while cubs are left to fend for themselves. And this is where biology kicks in. It's scientifically proven that baby-shaped features like big eyes, a large head with an unproportionately small face, and short limbs activate our parental behavior. It's hardwired in our brains. We see a cute animal like that that looks like a baby, and boom, we go, oh, we think it's like, look at this teddy bear. He's, what, two months old, so cute. I must protect him at all costs. And bears are very smart and social animals. If they get used to being fed by people and see that people are not a threat, then there's no way back to mother nature for this baby bear. Even if a matured orphan is released into the wild, he will keep coming back to humans for food. For all he knows, they're not a threat and they feed, something most people would disagree with, and terrified would most probably grab a gun. Am I right, Leo? For bears accustomed to humans, there's only one possible future, to stay with their adoptive parents of another species for good. This is exactly what happened with Mansur the bear. Poachers killed his mum and left him at a private airdrome. Pilot Andrey Ivanov found him. And when zoos and sanctuaries wouldn't have the baby bear, Ivanov decided to keep him and learn to take care of him. A mission that he's been carrying out for the past four years with the help of expert advice. Another domestic bear, Stepan, also came to his humans by accident. He couldn't catch up with his mother and fell into the hands of hunters. They took the baby out of the woods and went to sell him at a local market. And that's where the Pointillienko couple found him. They're both professional animal trainers and they took the cub in. Stepan's now 26 years old. He's pursuing a career of a photo model and has become an Instagram influencer. You can say that it's his way of chipping into the family budget because providing a life for a fully grown bear isn't cheap after all. For orphaned bears that can still live in the wild, there's only one option in Russia. The Pazhetnov Bear Orphanage is located in the Tver region, less than 200 kilometres away from Moscow. This bear rescue centre of the International Fund for Animal Welfare has been operating for 20 years now. It's led by Valentin Pazhetnov, the author of the world's best method of rehabilitation of wild orphaned cubs of brown bears. And notice that I said rehabilitation. It's because this centre is one of the few places where bears are raised and then released into the wild. The secret of Pazhetnov's method is to minimise contacts between bears and humans and not become attached to the cubs. The most important thing in this method is that the bears should remain afraid of humans and the traces of human life. Everything else is unimportant. This is the third generation of the Pazhetnov family working in this centre. When working with a bear, the most important thing is not to start loving him, to treat him so that he thinks he is your friend. There should always be a clear distinction between the fact that you are a man and he is a wild beast, a bear that must be wild. And all possible desires of the cub to lick your hand or touch you with their paw are immediately stopped and we keep a certain distance from them so that they understand that we are not friends at all, that in their future they will be on their own. Sometimes, yes, I do want to pet the bears. I want to touch them. But with this type of work, it seems to me that it will only have a very negative effect on the bears. The best place for a bear is the forest and taiga and not the houses of Russian people who by chance began to take care of these incredible predators. You can find out more about Mansur, Stepan and the Pazhetnov orphanage by following the links in the description box of this video. How did the brown bear become the symbol of Russia? Why not the polar bear? While we cover these issues for you, let us know what you think in the comments below. Thanks for watching.