2023 is a record year for bear attacks in Japan, that fabled land of the rising sun. Yes, some 203 persyns have been attacked by the furry beasts this years alone, a record. According to CNN via Breitbart, the hungry bears are looking for acorns and find tasty human flesh instead:
“The thing is that you can have years of bad harvests and years of good harvest of acorns,” contends Maki Yamamoto of Nagaoka University of Technology. “And when the harvest is bad, the bears cannot store enough energy before hibernation by eating mountain acorns alone, so they get closer to human settlements looking for fruits, chestnuts, persimmons, walnuts, and farm products in general.”
So why the sudden uptick in ursine attack? Climate Change, obviously, which is why we all need to be taxed moar or we'll get eaten by bears.
Cheers,
LSP
20 comments:
When the Japanese started dumping all that radiated water into the Pacific, you just knew something large and ugly would go on the attack.
I hadn't thought of that, Wild, good call. Mother Nature does have a habit of biting back.
Sigh... how about weather patterns changing from La Nina to El Nino...
Has nothing to do with the anti-gun and anti-hunting culture combined with the abandonment of rural areas by the population and the rapid reduction of said population by not having births.
Nope.
Nothing to see here.
Getting between a bear and his meal just might make you the meal.
“Go back to the bush and eat some berries like yer supposed ta.”
Classic Anglophone-Francophone relations in Turdeau-land.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_DQHDUDzBI4&pp=ygUYU2hvcmVzeSBjaGlycGluZyBmcmFua2ll
To riff off of WSF, as the saying goes, "We only have Fear to fear itself. Except for Bears. Bears will kill you."
And the inevitable saying, "Wear bells in Bear Country. If they're black bears the bells will run away. If they're brown bears it will help to identify your remains, mostly poop, as human."
Pilgrim, are you sure you know how to skin Griz?
How many bears could there be on such small islands?
Well yes, NFO, stirring up those bears.
Beans, are Japs allowed to own firearms and live in he country? I think some of them hunt, but not many.
Now that, WSF, is a very good point.
Mike, a CLASSIC.
I don't know that there were any bears left in Japan. I looked it up and there are black bears similar to ours and in the far northern island they have a close relative of the Kodiak Bear. Pandas BTW are actually related to raccoons, but the Japanese don't have those.
I agree with all of that, Beans.
Though my youngest son, curiously, believes grizzlies are more tameable than black bears, which is why children's toy bears are brown. Huh. Sometimes I wonder if he's marching to the beat of a different drum. Not a bad beat but... different.
Just as fast as you can catch 'em, Wild.
I was thinking that too, Anon. Lots, apparently.
Maybe it's some kind of residual Shinto thing?
I'm with you, Night Wind, had no idea.
Pandas and raccoons? This, too, is new to me.
The Japanese can own firearms. They make some really beautiful shotguns and bolt action guns. It's just hard for an average ToJoe to have them. And to use them for non-hunting is a major crime.
My dad bought a beautiful over-under trap gun in Japan in the '50s. As good or better than any other country. They really do pay lavish attention to detail in Japan.
As to how many bears there are in Japan, many people forget that a good portion of all the islands are very mountainous and very wooded. Actual livable and farmable land is at a premium, and always has been. So lots of bears and other wildlife. Japan has the same issue of deer killing cars and people that we have.
And... a 4-balled Japanese raccoon (tanuki) is a symbol of great luck. Or latent radiation from Hiroshima and Nagasaki (joke, as there is no evidence after, what, almost 80 years of testing at H and N of mutagenic issues with wildlife, and 4-balled lucky raccoons have been a thing for centuries before said flashbulbs were set off.)
Thanks for the info, Wild.
I have to say, I wasn't aware of bears in Japan and its islands. They say they're coming back in North Texas/Oklahoma, but I may be behind the news on that.
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