Russian Brown Bears

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One article about bears and Russia. Some figures are what they are, but overall interesting information. From December 2009.

Quotes:

The Most Russian of All Beasts

"A bear has been Russia's long-standing national symbol: in all political caricatures, Russia is shown as a bear. The association holds not only because Russian politics has always been in line with the bears' nature but also because our country does have a record number of these animals."

"In Russia, brown bears occur everywhere where there are forests: from the western border to the Bering Sea, Sea of Okhotsk, and Sea of Japan. In the Russian north-east, one can come across these animals as far to the north as the tundra, up to the Arctic Ocean shore. The largest animals live in the east, along the coastlines of the Pacific Ocean seas, from Kamchatka to the Russian Far East."

Next to Gods
"Down the ages, man has come across brown bears more than once. Evidence for this is so extensive that we can dwell on just a few facts here.

In the primitive times, the bear became a cult animal embodying strength and fearlessness. Moreover, many nationalities regarded him the ancestor of humans, their senior relation, the creature that personifies the connection between the sky and the earth."


"A bear was the most worshipped animal of Ancient Slavs. In the pagan times, it was associated with the god Volos, patron of domestic animals. In the Slavic folklore a bear was the totem personifying a man: father, husband, or fiance. It was no accident that legends about turnskin bears appeared: it was believed that people could be turned into bears for misbehavior – no wonder the feet and toes of these animals resembled the humans’."

"Russian mythology puts an emphasis on the bears’ hypersexuality – the animals are considered to be well-disposed to women, who they attack to take them to their lairs and cohabit with them. According to legends, the progeny of such “marriage” is bogatyrs (epic heroes). It is not for nothing that in ancient Slavic wedding rituals the bride and the groom were called a he-bear and a she-bear. At Christmastide a young guy was dressed as a bear – he would go around guisers and prey on young girls."

"Bear cubs often come to people’s hands as a result of hunting bear lairs. Therefore, zoos of this country abound in bears, and hunters themselves often have to keep the cubs for quite some time. Bear cubs under a year old are sweet and charming, friendly and shy. They can spend hours playing with people and domestic animals. Only when they are two years old, they become dangerous.
As luck would have it, for two years we observed a couple of bear cubs living at a hunting farm, virtually at large. The bear cubs and dogs played their games that looked like fights to us. However, they would never do harm to each other: the paws of a bear can be very delicate unless the animal is put in a temper or scared.
So do not believe those who tell you horror stories about malicious bears. These animals are the ornament to Russian forests, our true younger brothers, who claim respect and, ultimately, need to be protected."


Article here: https://scfh.ru/en/papers/the-most-russi...ll-beasts/

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