When a polar bear visited an encampment, tourist photographers looked on in awe. After enjoying the sighting for a while, they eventually decided it was time for the predator to leave.
Nick Dale submitted the video of the encounter. While the exact location isn’t confirmed, it would have been somewhere in the Arctic Circle, where polar bears live.
Stare-Down With the World’s Largest Land Carnivore
The video opens with a tense moment: two men face off with a polar bear. Between them and the bear is a barrier with multiple strands — likely electrified — offering some measure of protection.
Polar bears are the largest land carnivore, with adult males weighing between 300 and 800 kilograms. Their massive size far surpasses that of tigers and lions.
Uncertain Behaviour
At first, the bear’s body language suggests uncertainty. If the fence strands are electrified, the bear may have received a shock earlier, which could explain why it behaves with cautious curiosity rather than aggression. It’s also possible this was the bear’s first encounter with humans.
Polar bears have attacked and even killed humans on rare occasions. Between 1870 and 2014, there were 73 documented attacks resulting in 20 fatalities. However, these encounters are relatively uncommon, partly because few people live in polar bear habitats. In many of those attacks, the bears were experiencing nutritional stress due to scarcity of their natural food sources.
Loud Pop
In the next part of the video, the bear seems to grow bolder and approaches closer. One of the men removes an object from his pocket, which appears to be some kind of noise-making device, possibly a pistol or other deterrent. A loud pop is heard, and snow puffs up beside the man — suggesting he fired the device to warn the bear away.
Immediate Retreat
After the loud noise, the bear backs off. It seems the bear was not so desperate or hungry that it would ignore the threat of loud sounds from these unusual two-legged creatures.
Peace Returns
The men remain calm and do not run, which is important because running can trigger a predator’s instinct to chase. After the initial tension subsides, the bear begins to walk away, clearly deciding it doesn’t want to be near the noisy humans. Once the bear departs, the tense encounter ends, and the photographers return to capturing images of the bear and the stunning Arctic landscape.
