A heart-warming footage of a baby bear attempting to climb a mountain blanketed with a thick layer of snow has created a lot of buzz on social media.
However, wildlife experts believe that while the video is being labelled as “inspirational”, it has brought out a side of wildlife that one may not know of.
In a two-and-a-half minute video that went viral on social media, the bear cub can be seen trying to scale a steep, snow-covered slope with its mother.
We could ALL learn a lesson from this baby bear: Look up & don’t give up. pic.twitter.com/DOAEBivl4v
— I_love_nature (@i_iove_nature) November 7, 2018
At first, the cub stands with its mother on the side of a steep ridge. After the mother began walking across, its little one followed and despite slipping a few times on the loose snow, the mother soon reached the top but her cub slid several feet.
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Unfazed by the snow, the cub can be seen making several attempts only to slip each time till it finally reached the top, according to The Atlantic.
The best MondayMorning video. That little bear just didn’t give up. I’ll now start this week-and every week-with that spirit. Also a lesson in child-rearing; If I’m not wrong, the mother bear actually made the cub slip down again & try harder, so as to build his willpower.. pic.twitter.com/9kaQU7wIkI
— anand mahindra (@anandmahindra) November 5, 2018
While netizens are lauding the cub for its perseverance, wildlife biologists and other experts have stated that an irresponsible stunt has instilled fear in the bears as they suspect the video has been captured by a drone.
“The bears were extremely disturbed by what definitely appears to be based on the way it’s moving – a drone capturing a video,” wildlife ecologist
Ditmer, who was the lead author of a particularly apropos study that investigated how bears react to drones, suspected that noisy drones that appear out of nowhere scare the bears beneath them.
“I really doubt they would have taken that route, or they would have taken that route much more carefully and slowly if there weren’t this foreign thing buzzing obviously way too close to them,” he added.