Big cat and Bear tale

[Apex Titan]

@LandSeaLion 

Quote:When I read this, honestly, I did not walk away with the same impression as you, Apex. Instead, I came away with these conclusions:

a) Krechmar doesn't actually have any first hand information about the event, only what had been given to him via the news report (just like the rest of us).

b) He believes that bears and tigers kill and devour each other, and that it just so happened that this time it was the tiger who was the fortunate victor. He seems to have an open mind about it, and doesn't seem to think one is dominant over the other.

c) He didn't actually say that it was a healthy bear, but simply repeated from the information that he was given (the paw size) that it was big.

d) Krechmar considers Seredkin (co-author of a paper on Amur tiger predation, which reported tigers preying on brown bears only up to the size of adult females) to be a more knowledgeable expert on tiger-bear predation activity than himself.

e) He comments that it's easy to misjudge the size of tiger paw prints made in snow. I'll say more about this later.

f) Finally, he points out that even a highly knowledgeable expert will not be able to know exactly what happened by examining the scene - the tracks give some ideas, but not a conclusive picture. People are not clairvoyant.

That's a far more nuanced picture than "a biologist confirmed that a huge, healthy bear was killed by a tiger."

I have similar remarks to make about this conversation:

It seems that you clearly didn't understand my post. I only posted Krechmar's opinion because the bear fans kept spouting nonsense about "no biologists have confirmed this account" which is nonsense. My point was to show that even Krechmar accepts this case, he never denied it, period.

Krechmar said its easy to misjudge the size of TIGER paw prints, NOT bear paw prints. Making the 18 cm palm callus width of the killed bear even more reliable. And Krechmar said that an 18 cm palm callus width belongs to a very large bear, he also never disputed the size of the bear's paw prints.

No, only tigers are known to kill and devour brown bears, not vice versa. Krechmar is clearly wrong about that. When's the last time a brown bear killed any tiger?  There's not a single reliable account of a brown bear killing even a little tiger cub in the last 30 years. There are only those 12 old, outdated cases from the last century, but even those accounts can be disputed, as there are zero modern day equivalents to those cases.

Krechmar is referring to head-on fights between tigers and brown bears, in which both can be the victor and then eat their opponent.

Krechmar said: "Yes, healthy", now what did he mean by saying "healthy"??

Krechmar's comments about Seryodkin are completely irrelevant, what's that got to do with anything here?  Seryodkin studies tiger-bear relations in the Primorye region, not the Khabarovsk territories, in which this male brown bear was killed. Seryodkin is not some ultimate tiger-bear expert, so why mention him? Seryodkin is irrelevant in this case.

Sorry, but Krechmar stated nonsense here. Of course a highly knowledgeable expert will easily be able to determine what happened. Judging and reading animal traces in the snow is the easiest way to determine what happened. Why do you think most Amur tiger prey studies took place by winter snow-tracking? because its easy to track and follow tigers in the snow.

The forest inspectors, guards and rangers like Yuri Kya (who examined the kill-site) are highly trained and experienced experts in judging the traces of wild animals in the forest. They spend their whole life in the taiga, more so than biologists like Seryodkin. These same specialists, who found the killed bear, oversee and also take part in the census of animals in the Khekhtsir reserve. Meaning, they know the animals very well and are able to accurately judge and read their traces. In the snow, it will be no problem for them.

Now tell me, if you were walking in a forest clearing in the snow, and you saw that the entire clearing (snow) had been trampled up with paw prints which clearly showed that a tiger and big brown bear were fighting, and then you find a carcass of a large male brown bear, with clear evidence of the tiger feeding on it and resting near the bear carcass, what would you conclude??

What obviously happened?  And Krechmar should have been asked this same question!  But of course he wasn't, because he was talking to a bear fan who's desperately trying to find any excuse to "debunk" this account, which he can't.

Quote:From my perspective, Kolchin's observation that it was a small bear isn't a throw-away comment based on a mistaken belief that a half eaten bear was actually a small bear. It's conditional to his "confirmation" that the incident occurred in the first place. He was ready to believe that the incident happened because it only looked like a small bear, and such predation events are commonplace. He suspects that the 18cm measurement made by the trackers was actually a mistake.

Like Krechmar, he also doesn't appear to have first hand knowledge of the event beyond the link to the report that he was given. So, all in all, I can't take this as "biologist confirmation that a tiger killed a large bear" either.

Why are you twisting Kolchin's words for??  He never said, nor implied that it was a "small bear", so what are you on about?  You clearly made that up.

All he said is that it doesn't look like a "big male", that's all. He never said that it wasn't an adult male brown bear, or that it doesn't look like an "adult male". There's a clear difference between an 'average adult male' brown bear (250 - 264 kg) and a 'big male' brown bear (300 - 400+kg).

In fact, Kolchin clearly stated that the "Bear was not so bigger", which clearly implies that he thinks the killed bear was bigger than the tiger, but not much bigger. He said absolutely nothing about a "small bear" killed. He only mentioned that brown bears are common prey for adult male tigers.

Of course the partially-eaten carcass of the brown bear might not look like a "big male" to Kolchin or some people, especially from a video filmed on a phone/and some pictures. Its hard to judge the actual size of a bear like this.

Here's a perfect example. Here is a large male (healthy) grizzly bear that weighs close to 500 lbs (492 lb), but many people can easily mistake this large bear for a small male grizzly weighing around 330 - 350 lbs:

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

Even though the killed male brown bear was partially eaten by the tiger, its body length still looked longer than this healthy, fully-intact, 223 kg adult male grizzly bear.

I would have never estimated this 492 lb grizzly bear to weigh even 430 lbs, let alone 492 lbs. My guess would have been somewhere between 170 - 175 kg. But look how wrong I would have been, that bear is much heavier than I would have guessed.

Also note, the tiger had already eaten a large, significant portion of the bear, so Kolchin's remarks about the bears size prove nothing, he could easily be mistaken by the pictures. Kolchin wasn't there at the scene, he never saw the carcass of the brown bear up close in real-life like the forest rangers did. Big difference.

I can post many more examples of large bears that look relatively smallish in size.

Quote:The Amur Tiger Center (also only a second-hand source) made the same observation - that, contradicting the reports of the 18cm paw size, the bear was "not the biggest."

(Above is the Google Translate version, which includes the amusing translation "beetroot" instead of "brown bear" - it's a pretty funny mental picture, heh. DeepL offers this translation:

"An Amur tiger crushed/ran over a brown bear in the Bolshekhetsir Nature Reserve in Khabarovsk Krai.

Read more about the incident in the publication of the protected area.

We can add that tigers in general often kill bears. Brown bears less often, but Himalayan bears more often. In this case the brown bear was not the biggest, so the tiger was initially the favorite in this fight.")

Personally, I'm not convinced by the explanation that Kolchin and the Amur Tiger Center couldn't tell the difference between a half eaten large bear and a small bear. When I saw the video myself, I also didn't think the carcass looked like it belonged a large bear at all - if it was, then surely the shape would be quite different, right? But, how on earth do we reconcile that very valid observation with the report of an 18cm size paw, indicating a large bear? Something that wasn't clear to me at all from reading the information given in the thread, including the original news report: was the 18cm measurement taken directly from the bear's carcass, or from paw prints in the snow? It's a pretty important distinction to make, because as Krechmar pointed out, determining the size of paw prints made in snow is an uncertain process, owing to the softness of the substrate. More information can be found about that here:

There's a big difference between the words: "large" and "largest", you do realise that, right?

Where's the contradiction?  Who said an 18 cm palm callus width belongs only to the biggest brown bear in the forest?  An 18 cm paw size no doubt belongs to a large bear, but that doesn't mean it's the "largest" bear. 

The Amur Tiger Center clearly stated: "was not the largest". They never said, nor implied that it "wasn't a large bear."  You're either deliberately twisting their words, or simply misunderstood what they said.

According to the experts, they found traces all over the forest clearing of the tiger and bear fighting, which clearly indicated that the tiger killed the brown bear. Now, how exactly were the 18 cm paw prints measured? I don't know. You'll have to contact Yuri Kya to find that out. But all the reports mention that the killed bear was of "impressive size" and had a palm callus width of 18 cm.

Your whole arguments are based on pure guesswork.

Quote:Furthermore, I also wonder: if they did measure a paw print, is it not possible that it could even have belonged to a different bear? The bear carcass is covered with a thick layer of snow, which makes me think that some time may have fallen since its death. However, those paw prints around it look quite new, not covered by snow at all - could they have possibly been made by the tiger scrapping with an even bigger bear that was trying to scavenge the carcass's remains at some point later? Counterpoint against this line of reasoning though: if it did belong to another bear which survived, then we'd expect to see bear tracks leading away from the site of the conflict. There was no mention of this, and it doesn't seem like the kind of thing that would be easily overlooked.)

Some more information can be found elsewhere on the Internet though, as GreenGrolar has already alluded to above. I was prompted to go looking because honestly, it has struck me that for a very long time, the Edge of Extinction thread has not really been a neutral source of interesting information about tigers, but the platform for one side of an extremely extended "tiger vs bear" debate waged between two warring factions, with the other side being platformed on a bear-focused board which keeps being addressed, but only rarely named ("Domain of the Bears"). Peter's posts have also mentioned that much animosity towards the Edge of Extinction thread has been coming from members of that board.

Well, I'm a curious cat, so I searched out this board so that I could see the other side of the story, so to speak, and lurked on it without participating. While there was indeed a ridiculous amount of bias towards bears and an extremely distasteful focus on "animal vs animal" fights there (of the kind that you would see in Carnivora), there was also some pretty important information in one recent post that I think is actually highly relevant. The first is this observation of a big bear paw print in the snow (which the trackers unfortunately appear to have stomped on):

This makes me think that it is entirely possible that the trackers didn't actually directly measure the bear's paw (which may have been consumed by the tiger), but measured instead the paw print in the snow.

Are you an expert in judging the paw prints and traces of bears?  Are you an expert in determining what a fresh bear track is?  Based on what exactly does that bear track look "quite new"?

It's a fact that even older tracks can remain frozen into the ground, and remain there for several days. How? because I've seen this happen with my dog's tracks in the snow. His older tracks remained frozen into the ground even several days later.

The entire battle-ground/kill-site was not filmed on video, it was just a short video filmed on a phone. They must have measured the bears tracks after they stopped filming and continued to examine the scene. Looking for specific details in that short video is pointless.

Just like you pointed out, if there was any possibility that another bigger brown bear was at the scene, then the specialists would have clearly seen the bears trail leaving the kill-site as well. But they found nothing, they only found tracks and traces of a tiger and big male brown bear fighting in the snow, and then the killed bears partially-eaten carcass. That says it all.

Quote:The second, and more important piece of information though is this email, which was apparently received from Mikhail Milezhik, Head of the Protection Department of the Bolshekhtsirsky Reserve where the incident took place. GreenGrolar has already posted this.

This looks like a pretty confident and definitive statement from someone who would presumably be intimately familiar with the status of animal populations and territories in the reserve - such information may have been gleaned from the bear's remains (ie. skull and teeth). It is, however, also entirely inconsistent with any claim that it was a huge bear - a three year old bear is a juvenile or subadult, nowhere near close to being fully grown. Brown bears do not reach their full size until they are 10-11 years old.

However Apex, you've also shown evidence that Milezhik replied to another user, "goodhope683", to say that the information about the bear having 18cm-sized paws is valid:

So. How can this be? Which is correct? Was one (or both) of these emails fabricated?

If both are actually real, then the only ways that I can think of to reconcile them would be these:

- The bear was a three year old juvenile
- The tracks belonged to the juvenile, but were incorrectly measured by the trackers due to the softness of the substrate (snow)

Or:

- The bear was a three year old juvenile
- The tracks were correctly measured but belonged to a different, larger bear, which the trackers failed to pick up on

Or:

- The bear was not a juvenile, Milezhik is misinformed and can't be taken as a credible expert in this particular case (morever, both Kolchin and the Amur Tiger Center made wrong observations)
- The paw size was directly and correctly measured by the trackers, and indeed belonged to the very large bear

All three of these scenarios require some degree of human error, which honestly isn't that far fetched - even the best experts do get things wrong sometimes. No one is infallible. And yes, that includes the trackers.

It's a real shame that you left the second email from Milezhik out of the Edge of Extinction thread though, as it is obvious that you are actively reading the board where it was posted, even if only to formulate rebuttals - I noticed that your last post in the Edge of Extinction thread actually responded to the "Domain of the Bears" post that contained that email, but only to the bit about the bear being referred to in the comment section of the video as "Misha" (apparently a common generic nickname for bears in Russia). Not the actually relevant and contradictory information, which was the "Misha" in question potentially being only three years old.

..instead, you've chosen to dismiss it outright as a fabrication. Hey, this could very well be the case - it's a screenshot posted on a message board after all, not an email attachment, and people can and do tell lies on the Internet. I haven't contacted Milezhik myself to verify - I don't even have his contact email. But for heaven's sake, if you truly want to be a neutral source of information Apex, then don't just include the one screenshot of an email from Milezhik (the one to goodhope683) as evidence to support the case that you clearly want to make while neglecting the one that doesn't support your argument, without at least explaining why you've done this. If one is fake, then that raises the possibility of the other one being fake too.

How did the Amur Tiger Center make "wrong observations"??  They never once said that it wasn't a 'large' bear, at all. All they said is that the bear was "not the biggest". There's a clear difference! You're just twisting their words. And Kolchin is merely suspecting thats all, that proves nothing. Like I showed above, even a fully-grown, healthy adult male grizzly bear weighing almost 500 lbs, can look fairly small or medium-sized and be easily mistaken for a 330-350 lb bear. So Kolchin's observation means nothing. He was obviously mistaken, especially by a partially-eaten carcass on video/pictures.

The reason why I never posted that other alleged email from Milezhik, is because I honestly don't trust that email. Why? All I know is that it was posted by some bear fan. Whereas the email I posted, I trust, because I know and trust the source (goodhope683).

Also, Milezhik not only said that the information about the bears 18 cm paw width is valid, but also about the bear being an ADULT brown bear killed. Why didn't you mention that part? And why did Yuri Kya not mention in his statements/reports about this incident, that the killed bear was called "Misha"??  If the bear was really a "juvenile" and called "Misha", then that definitely would have been mentioned in all those numerous reports about this incident. And Yuri Kya never mentioned anything about a 3 year old bear called "Misha" killed in any of his statements!

There are around 18 - 20+ news reports about this incident, even the governor of the Khabarovsk territory mentioned this case in his Telegram channel. It was also reported in the TV News channels in Russia, and not a single source, article or report mentions anything about a "juvenile" 3 year old brown bear called "Misha" that was killed by the tiger in Khekhtsir, nothing. All the reports consistently note that the killed brown bear was of "impressive size" and had a palm callus width of 18 cm. Which means it was a large adult male brown bear killed, and Milezhik confirms this in his email to 'goodhope683'.

Whenever a particular individual animal has been named, and dies for any reason, the reports will ALWAYS mention the killed animal's name. Because the experts identify that individual, but in this case, specialists only mentioned about a tiger who killed an impressive-sized bear, but absolutely no mention or hint of a 3 year old brown bear called "Misha" killed. Why?

Experienced and highly trained experts like Yuri Kya (who are very familiar and knowledgeable about the animals in the forest) would easily be able to determine by the bears carcass if it was a juvenile brown bear, easily. But they reported the exact opposite, they noted the bear was of "impressive size" and large. So how can it possibly be a juvenile brown bear killed, when the specialists who found the killed bear and examined the scene, reported nothing of the sort??  Makes no sense, whatsoever. And thats another reason why I never posted that other "email" from Milezhik because it doesn't correspond with all the reports and statements from the experts like Yuri Kya and the forest rangers.

I only posted information in the extinction thread that corresponds with all the original reports and statements from the experts/specialists.

Here, you can contact the reserve and ask them these questions: (Contact the Bolshekhehtsirsky Branch)

http://www.zapovedamur.ru/contacts

Quote:Just to reiterate - I don't actually think it's out of the realm of possibility that the tiger successfully preyed upon a large male bear. I'm keeping an open mind about it, not dismissing it. But by declaring, by fiat, that the original story is absolutely infallible and that the bear having an 18cm sized paw is "god's truth", you're doing the opposite of keeping an open mind - you're automatically dismissing any additional information that contradicts this picture, without further thought. This assumption also heavily slanted the way you interpreted each of the biologists whose commentary you have included - including Kolchin, who quite explicitly said that he believes that the paw size may have been measured incorrectly. 

Whether you intended it or not, this annoyingly selective editing and filtering of information, with the end result showing one side of a story that is not at all clear, was what finally triggered me to write down this massive compilation of my thoughts and doubts about the whole thing. The Edge of Extinction thread is ostensibly meant to be a place where good, neutral information about tiger behaviour and biology is posted, unbiased by subjective opinion...but I don't think it has achieved that goal, for all the reasons I've posted (sorry Peter).

I will say though, that I did like these comments you made later:

Selective editing and filtering of information??  Are you serious?  Here's the big difference, my posts about this incident in the extinction thread, is solely based on the reports and statements made by the actual real experts and specialists who found the killed bear and examined the kill-site.

Unlike the bear fans, I don't deal with guesswork, personal opinions, assumptions and wild speculations. I like to post EVIDENCE and accounts. Your response to me, was highly based on guesswork, and you even clearly twisted the words of both Sergey Kolchin and the Amur Tiger Center. By doing this, we'll keep going around in circles about this case, which is pointless. You have zero evidence to back-up your speculations and personal opinions.

Your response is all about you wondering about this and that. No evidence though.

There is no shred of evidence that proves that the specialists measured the bears paw size incorrectly, nothing. Its all pure guesswork. I have no reason to doubt the conclusions of highly trained and experienced experts like Yuri Kya, who are far more experienced in the forest than most biologists are! People like Yuri Kya know how to accurately judge the traces of wild animals, they're specifically trained to do so, as they take part in the census of animals in the reserve.

The edge of extinction thread is where you post actual EVIDENCE, DATA & REPORTS to back up your arguments and claims. Which is exactly what Peter wants. The last thing the edge of extinction thread needs is posts full of guesswork, biased opinions and speculations etc. You learn nothing from that.

Thats exactly why I posted all that large abundance of information about this incident in the extinction thread. So the general public can read the actual reports and see what the true experts stated, and not the highly biased opinions and excuses of bear fans who ignorantly dismiss this account because it doesn't suit their agenda's.

Quote:Final note, and a bit of a rant (with my own very opinionated voice):

I don't think any biologist worth their salt actually cares overly much about the question "who would win in a fight, a tiger or a bear?" beyond the science of tiger predation/tiger and bear conservation. There's a thin line between the former (a pop culture "spectator sport" type of question, and a bloodthirsty one at that) and the latter, which actually has important ecological ramifications.

I also don't believe that language like "the tiger crushes the bear" belongs in any kind of reputable scientific conversation about predation and interspecific conflict.  Perhaps this is a language translation issue, but I'm genuinely surprised and more than a bit concerned to see this language ("run over"/"crushed"/"flattened") being repeatedly used not only here on Wildfact, but also by the Amur Tiger Center and by one of the biologists quoted (although in that last case, at least it was only in the comment section of his informal blog).

It is this kind of disrespect for animals, and the downright toxic and tribal nature of "my favourite animal beats your favourite animal" debates plaguing the Internet, that puts me off wanting to participate in a forum like Carnivora. I can't help but notice that several of the images that were posted in the Edge of Extinction thread are hosted on a group called "Animal Fight Club"...that's not exactly encouraging. Is Wildfact also an "animal vs animal" board, or is it a wildlife enthusiast board focused on scientific information? I joined because I thought it was the latter, but from my perspective, it also comes dangerously close to being the former...I can't help but feel that Wildfact's Edge of Extinction thread and the bear forum are each playing host to a selectively edited version of a story that supports a favourite animal, in a wholly unscientific debate based more on "spectator sport" entertainment than genuine respect for nature. It's disappointing.

End rant.

The word: "Crushes" or "Crush" is a word often used by the Russian biologists, zoologists, naturalists and hunters. Its just part of their lingo. If you read the scientific literature/popular literature books from Russian biologists, you'll see that they often use the word "Crush" instead of "kill".  Thats not a "disrespect towards animals", thats ridiculous, your being way too sensitive.

Did you read any of Peter's posts on why I post about tigers vs bears in the tiger extinction thread??  I guess not.

Once again, the reason why I post about tigers vs bears in the extinction thread is because this particular topic is of great interest to many people, including me and Peter. Its a fascinating subject because nowhere else on earth do two massive, similar-sized terrestrial predators of a different species, live alongside each other in the same forest. And nowhere else on earth does such a powerful carnivore as a brown bear get actively hunted, killed and eaten by another huge predator.

Interspecific relationships/conflicts between large predators fascinates many wildlife experts and biologists. There's a good reason why a Chief scientist & biologist like John Goodrich wrote this article:

https://panthera.org/blog-post/dance-dea...heast-asia

And there's a reason why the Amur Tiger Center published this video:

If you're not interested in this particular topic, then fine, everyone has their interests and preferences. But don't knock other people for liking something you don't. Don't people debate all the time, about who would win in a fight between two boxers, MMA fighters, Martial artists etc??  Is that being "toxic" and disrespect towards all those fighters??  Of course not. And large wild predators are the most formidable and ultimate fighters on earth, so its natural and human nature for most people to be interested in who would win in a fight between two powerful predators.

Since I started posting about tigers vs bears in the edge of extinction thread, that thread has had more views than ever before!  That shows that many people are interested in this topic.

Of course Wildfact is not an "Animal vs Animal" forum, and I also don't want it to become that. However, the tiger vs bear topic is an exception, because even the co-owner of this forum is very interested about the relationship/interactions between these two huge predators. What's wrong with that? Reply