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© 2018 AFPPet black bear kills caretaker
By Raymond Roig TOKYO©2024 GPlusMedia Inc.
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© 2018 AFP
43 Comments
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Chip Star
Moral of the story: Don't keep wild animals as pets.
Yubaru
Quite a bit different than the one in the picture that is for sure!
Also according to the Japanese news this guy occasionally helped to watch the bear when the owner would be out of town!
He was NOT the full time keeper!
Anyone who keeps a wild animal like this is literally asking for trouble!
mb96768
Black bears are huge! And this guy "kept the animal in a cage in his house"? The animal was probably nuts being caged up all the time. I would have killed the first human I could get my claws into. And so what are the officials going to do? Put down the animal?!
thepersoniamnow
Snake bites owner
Pitbull mauls man
Bear kills owner
Life imitates life fools.
I have fish and dogs at home
hooktrunk2
Can you imagine having a big bear in a cage in your home? Was it a rescued bear or unable to forage in the wild on its own? Questions abound.
Bintaro
http://www.news24.jp/articles/2018/12/03/07410704.html
Video where the cage can be seen. Any wild animal would get crazy being confined into that.
AgentX
Especially in cages! Animals, in general, are treated so poorly in Japan. Constantly locked up in tiny cages, or left outside on short leashes. It's disgusting.
AgentX
Thanks for the link, Bintaro.
Maria
Pet? That was no pet, that was an imprisoned animal, who was suffering extreme stress. Why on earth are licenses given to private individuals to keep wild animals in cages? It's bad enough we have so many zoos who keep animals in appalling conditions.
commanteer
Bears have a strength that far exceeds their weight.
I have to wonder how heartless/thoughtless people can be to keep wild animals in captivity like that. And why?
Vince Black
Play with fire and get burnt
keep a massive black bear in a tiny cage and get mauled to death.
kurisupisu
I guess the beer didn’t know about the permit!
I find cats are much better pets than bears......
Goodlucktoyou
I want a pet bear as I stayed in a place in Vietnam for a while that had one. It was not in a cage. Before I had big dogs but never used chocked chain. If you treat animals with respect, they will do the same. I can’t visit a Japanese zoo.
Cricky
A bear in a cage inside a house, legally?, you have to be joking. I was going to say that will end badly, but that story has reached its natural conclusion. Like that American woman with the pet Chimpanzee, ripped her friends face off. They are called wild animals for a reason. Best to view on the Animal planet channel. Not in your vicinity. Neighbors must have been impressed.
Luddite
It should be illegal to keep wild animals as pets. Japan doesn't care about animal welfare.
Disillusioned
Keeping a wild animal as a pet has been proven to be a stupid idea over and over again. The article doesn't say how big the cage is or how long the bear had been locked up. No doubt this will result in the bear being put down.
This made me think of that case in the US ten years ago or so when a pet chimpanzee escaped and ripped a person's face off.
nandakandamanda
Quote: "The 15-year-old Asian black bear was owned by a 70-year-old man who kept the animal in a cage in his house."
Bintaro's video (thanks) shows a massive structure in the garden, not a small cage inside the house.
Ritsku
Just a note... Pit Bulls are actually one of the most gentle breeds. Any dog can be mean if you antagonize it enough. Just like if you shove a bear in a cage its entire life it's not going to be very happy with you, when in the wild it probably wouldn't even bother.
http://www.bearsmart.com/about-bears/behaviour/
Serrano
"The article doesn't say how big the cage is"
Thanks to bintaro's link we can see the cage is not as small as most of us would imagine, but still tiny compared to the great outdoors where the animal should be.
Fouxdefa
The cage (its size and how long the bear had been kept there) is an issue but whether the wild animal is caged or in a larger enclosure, you do NOT ever get in there with it. To clean or whatever you have to lure the animal into a section of the enclosure with a locking partition. The question is why did this guy get in there with the bear?? Why was a bear being kept in the first place?
Kangaesugi
The man that was killed wasn't the owner. He was a caretaker.
nandakandamanda
From my primary school days. (On the nature of bears.)
Algy met a bear.
The bear was bulgy.
The bulge was Algy.
BackpackingNepal
1982 The Old Bear Hunter By Toshio Goto, Could that 70 year old man a fan of this movie?
The picture of bear looks quite wild and raw, but not as gigantic as Timber Wolf which was recently captured in youtube video this year.
kwatt
Wonder what is going to happen to this bear? Go to zoo or become meat?
therougou
It wasn't the owner that got killed.
So that should be "don't work as caretaker for a crazy old man's wild animals".
ListenTheTruth
It was a captured, imprisoned, tormented wild animal, not a pet.
mtuffizi
110 kg bear as pet, what was in his mind? if he treated the bear as his pet, he should
take care the bear and play with the bear.
why gave him a permit at the beginning? shame.
JeffLee
Want a pet? Get a dog or a cat. Leave all the other creatures alone.
DaDude
Many countries allow bears as pets including 14 U.S. States. A quick look on your favorite search engine can prevent people from always isolating Japan.
rainyday
I'm almost more disturbed by the fact that they kept a bear that size in a cage than I am that the bear killed one of its captors.
I don't know the back story obviously, but I have trouble imagining a situation in which keeping a bear caged in a Japanese residential property (which suggests it was an extremely cramped cage) is anything but sick and cruel.
runner3
What kind of stupid government would give a private person a license to keep a bear? Just rediculas!
Omachi
Just wondering whether the bear was being milked - bile, that is. That would provide a reason to keep a bear in a cage.
browny1
nandakandamanda said - "...shows a massive structure in the garden, not a small cage..."
Massive? The Eiffel Tower is massive.
A structure a few metres by a few metres is not massive by any means - unless you're a mouse.
Confining a Large Roaming Animal alone in a "cage" is imo highly dangerous as well as unethical.
Black Bears are family group animals.
Black Bears spend a considerable part of their lives in trees foraging.
Black Bears Den as winter approaches seeking dark, "cosy" quiet places.
Etc, Etc.
The conditions of the "massive structure" would have not met any of the requirements for allowing the bear to have any inkling of a normal life.
So 19th Century. So cruel.
nandakandamanda
browny1, 'massive' compared to the statement in the article that it was a small cage *INSIDE the house, (and therefore in most commentators' minds above), in fact compared to that perhaps twenty or thirty times as large. Most people in Tokyo do not even have a garden as large as that, and most zoos here have smaller cages.
Agreed that a bear needs to be in the wild, and that 'massive' enclosure is a tiny compared to the hills and woods where it would naturally roam, but that is not what I was talking about.
*Until the article gets updated. Compare the article: "The 15-year-old Asian black bear was owned by a 70-year-old man who kept the animal in a cage in his house," with the linked photo by Bintaro above. Thank you.
Kenji Fujimori
I saw some videos about people owning bears as pets:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J184FmCiuLk
and: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7rZTZBOrqQ
Interesting.
browny1
nanda - thanks for your reply.
I don't want to get into semantics, so I'll leave your interpretation of massive. I didn't read in the article where it said "small" cage. But whatever.
And I'm glad we agree that the bear should be in the hills & woods where it would naturally roam.
Sadly too many animals are confined here with little or no compassion shown to their true nature and wellbeing.
If I see another monkey on a chain,,,,, I'll, I'll...probably be weak and do nothing. Complicit in their arranged agony by inaction.
But I'm glad I've never witnessed the sorry sight of a large beast of the wild - a bear - in a jail, or more aptly - death row.
William Bjornson
Asian black bears must be smaller. Circa 1980, a man just west (across the Mississippi) of LaCrosse, Wisconsin had an American black bear as a pet but this bear roamed the man's farm. His neighbors hated the bear. When I met the bear, he was about two years old I was told and was at least the size described for this 15 year old bear. He liked to lick hands, for the salt I was told, and when he licked my hand, the strength of just that tongue erased any thought in my mind of 'defense' in an active bear attack. But, having a bear as a 'friend' somehow still seems an attractive idea. In fact, this man in Iran makes me jealous...
https://ifpnews.com/news/homeland/tourism/man-of-nature-an-engineer-who-takes-care-of-animals-with-his-family-members/