There are no shortage of grizzly bears throwing down in Yellowstone National Park, but to see a couple fellas mixing it up at the local zoo? Not what you’re expecting to see. Hell, half the time you go to the zoo, most the animals are gone or sleeping, and then I’m stuck trying to explain to my toddler why there’s no animals at the zoo. “He’s probably sleeping… maybe he’s at the doctor…. maybe he’s taking a bath…” I’m running out of lies to tell my kid, man… figure it out.
That being said, the Milwaukee County Zoo is a pretty solid spot. As a new-ish Wisconsin resident, I took my daughter there she got to feed a giraffe, pet some goats, paid way too much for a stuffed lion at the gift shop… it was a good time.
We did see the family of bears, but not the royal rumble these folks saw last summer. According to TMJ4, this wild scene went down at the Milwaukee County Zoo when two bears started getting into it in front of a number of spectators.
The bears were initially swimming, but then started feeling a little feisty and proceeded to get into an intense fight. As you can see in the video, the two big beasts begin to swat and growl at each other, until the third bear has enough and steps in to break it up.
The Milwaukee County Zoo responded to the initial tweet of the video, explaining that the fight was apparently just a little spat between two brothers, and mama bear came in to break it up:
“This is grizzly bear Brian with the enrichment item, pushing brother Chinook back away from it and mom, Ronnie, coming to break up the bickering.”
I’m not gonna lie, Brian and Ronnie are pretty names for a bear. Chinook is cool too, but a little more expected.
Check it out:
Two Male Brown Bears Battle Over Whale Carcass After One Attacks A Female Bear
I recently got back from the lovely state of Montana, and while I didn’t run into any bears while I was there (probably a good thing), you get a first hand account of the vast, incredible, and humbling beauty this country has to offer.
And while Montana is amazing, it gets no more vast, incredible and humbling than… Alaska.
In this incredible footage at the Katmai Coast of Southern Alaska, we get to watch as two coastal brown bears engage in a vicious fight over a beached whale carcass.
According to Expeditions Alaska, two big male brown bears were laying claim to this beached whale carcass when some other bears came walking up to chow down.
That’s when all hell broke loose:
“These two large male brown bears had been strutting and posturing and peeing and rubbing, jaw clacking, and carrying on, generally chest-pounding, trying their best to intimidate one another, for near 20 minutes.
During this time, a few other smaller bears had come in and started feeding on the carcass, including this sow and her single yearling cub. One of the males came down and began to feed as well, but didn’t seem unduly concerned about the sow/cub on the other side of the whale carcass.”
But then, the female gets attacked:
“Finally, the second male came down, with that classic side-stepping strutting gait, and headed straight for the female. Her cub bails, and rather than follow suit, she gets defensive.
The power is pretty impressive, watch how far backward she goes each time. And incredibly deft footwork for her… if she didn’t maintain her balance, she’d have been in bigger trouble.”
But then, the other male comes to her rescue and it’s on.
The second male surprises the original attacker, but them seem to be well-matched for each other in size and power. They grapple like it’s a UFC fight, while the sow and her cub manages to get away.
Eventually, they’ve had enough and they separate, both looking pretty gassed from the tussle.
And we have a front row seat.
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Two Giant Alaskan Brown Bears Engage In Epic Battle
Grizzly bears, brown bears, Kodiak bears, whatever you want to call them, they’re all the same in at least one regard.
They’re absolutely terrifying.
Feasting on over 30 pounds of food per day, the enormous bears will take in anything from berries to vulnerable grizzly cubs, and when another bear gets in their way, they’re certainly not afraid to square up and protect what’s theirs.
Grizzly Man is a Werner Herzog documentary from 2005, which used footage from numerous sources, but focused around what was captured by Timothy Treadwell and his girlfriend Amie Huguenard over the last 5 years they spent studying them in person.
Tragically, they were killed by a grizzly bear while in Katmai National Park in Alaska in 2003. Audio of their fatal attack was captured by one of their cameras, but was never released.
The horror of that aside, the couple did capture some absolutely amazing imagery, including an epic battle between two Alaksna brown bears which proves it’s not always the bigger that wins.
It appears the smaller of the bears was just chilling out and laying on the ground when the larger approached and immediately escalated the situation, maybe believing his size alone would scare him off.
But the small bear stands his grounds, digs in and holds his own.
It’s truly a great display of grappling, both bears digging for underhooks and the larger even able to use a wizard to bring the smaller to the ground. Even while in the bad situation of being on his back, the smaller remains calm and is able to get back up on his feet and eventually thwart the attack.
Yet another amazing display of nature at it’s most powerful.
There’s something so calming and at the same time terrifying realizing our true place on the food chain if not for all the tools and technology brilliant people have created for us over the year. We truly do stand on the shoulders of giants.
RIP Timothy Treadwell and Amie Huguenard.
