Japan has far fewer bears than North America, yet far more fatal encounters. Why are the nation’s bears so uniquely dangerous?
by frozenpandaman
Japan has far fewer bears than North America, yet far more fatal encounters. Why are the nation’s bears so uniquely dangerous?
by frozenpandaman
40 comments
No guns
>Evidence suggests that the recent uptick — with 13 people killed by bears so far in the fiscal year that began April 1
Any period of time is admittedly arbitrary but I laughed seeing that bear attacks are counted by fiscal year.
The bears are closer to people
Japan is smaller and there is less space both humans and bears can coexist in
No one carries bear spray…
First of all… the most dangerous ones that generally cause fatality are brown bears ( or equivalent in the US grizzly bears )
There are estimated 12,000 in Japan, mostly in Hokkaido. ( 84,000 sq km)
In North America there are estimated 60,000 grizzly bears…. Approx half in Alaska, and 29,000 in Canada
Only around 1,000 in lower 48 states of US.
Alaska is 1,700,000+ sq km by itself (20 times size of Hokkaido, and about 5 times size of Japan) , and is far less populated
Canada is 9,000,000 sq km…. So around 20 times as large as Japan, and 107 times as large as Hokkaido.
These are just orders of magnitude larger in area, and with less than 50 million people (Japan is around 2.5 times more)
So less densely populated ppl in NA, and far more densely populated bears in Japan
Perhaps Japanese people just taste better
くまさんが森の中。。。。ʕ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʕ•̫͡•ʔ•̫͡•ʔ
They need geese & dogs to scare them off. The other day I saw someone walking a gorgeous Akita. No bears in Jiyugaoka…. Need some decent size dogs out and about.
My understanding is it’s depopulation of rural areas. A village with 300 people moving around doing their thing keeps bears away. Its a human area. That number drops down to 10-20 people in the village, there is a lot less human activity and bears start wandering in more often, increasing encounters.
…. but in Mass Shootings …. America has the lead by miles
A BIG reason is the declining population.
A lot of land that was cared for (farms, grassy open spaces) are returning to wild (BTW, this happened in North America as Europeans moved west into seemingly empty lands that obviously were previously cared for).
Soooooooo, bears will follow other animals, plus they run up against humans who now live closer to wild areas.
Also, bears have great smelling ability. They’ll smell a BBQ up to 30 km away, and if you are carrying food (chocolate, ham sandwich, etc), then at close distances you are now a walking target.
Growing up in California and the upper Midwest, I was taught all sorts of safety info about bears and other big animals (especially bucks. I almost died from one that was about two meters from me ready to attack). The Boy Scouts, high school outdoors club, National and State Parks, and locals all treat bear safety VERY seriously.
Japan seems to take the Hello Kitty approach.
I’m not advocating anything but it probably has to do with the difference in gun laws
It’s not the total number that matters, it’s the population density in a given area. Theres areas in Hokkaido that have the highest population density of brown bears in the world. Also, black bears which account for the highest percentage of attacks aren’t the same as black bears in the US or Canada, Japan has Asiatic black bears which are small but also more aggressive and likely to attack humans.
The Japanese bears are extremely *kawaii~* so that explains some of the incidents.
I ask my wife frequently now how the war on bears is going because I see it constantly on tv she’s watching. Let’s hope they don’t lose like Australia.
Well. 120 million crammed into a space the size of California. More people per square meter, you are going to run into lore bears just based on that.
[Just a reminder that Japan already has hunters who **used** to solve the problem.](https://www.reddit.com/r/japan/comments/1gqvogz/hokkaido_hunters_association_proclaimed_they_will/) but the government fucked around with them and now they are in the finding out stage.
The Japanese legal system decided to sue a hunter because they said it was unsafe for him to shoot at a bear that was close to some houses/buildings. The government sent him and his partner to that location to shoot the bear. The government sent a rep to accompany them who told the hunters it was okay to shoot there, The hunters refused to shoot because it was not safe, The rep insisted, they took a shot, missed, hit a rock, and the bullet ricocheted around and hit one of the hunters guns. The city sued and said the ricochet was proof that he could have hit a building. The hunter lost his license to own guns.
The hunting association then refused to do any more work for the government and told them to handle the bears on their own. (since 2018)
The government responded by doing absolutely nothing for 7 years, Which leads us to the current national headlines.
Alright… bear with me for a bit. Im going to try to paraphrase but it’s a lot. I feel the need to address this, cause I’m sick to death of seeing the ridiculous responses from all sides, endless news articles, and nobody is willing to just speak bluntly about the situation.
Long story short, it’s because of a lack of guns, hunting culture, natural predators, and beyond stupid policy and politicking, just like the places in America that have similar issues.
My family lives in the New England area, let’s just say the states at least have similar population densities to an extent, but they have wildly different laws with bears, hunting, and bear populations.
Bears have no natural predators. They are hyper dominant in the food chain, adaptive, and advantageous and lazy predators. They are not cuddly fluffy kawaiiiii Chan animals. Pardon the vulgarity but they will kill and eat their own young just so they can force the female into heat and mate again out of pure lust. They eat anything and everything and do not care at all about human presence if they have lost the fear of people, full stop period. So cut out the relocation programs or human bad anti-natal bullshit etc bears do not give a f***. Unfortunately if they are not managed, or hunted properly they lose all fear of human interaction within a few short years / generations. And then will willingly encroach on towns with c because hey trash and farms are 10000x easier then daily with nature or fish or game or finding anything else.
It’s been unseasonably warm too, (not gonna scream about climate this or that but it’s been warm a few years in a row), so foods down. Coupled with next to no legal hunting, stupid policies, no natural predators, and an explosion in population of bears… well no shit Sherlock now we have an issue.
I.E. see the natural experiment that is American States.
My family lives scattered across the New England area. Long story short… the state that doesn’t allow bear hunting, and also has the LOWEST population of bears… has the highest number of encounters, and some of the only fatal encounters in the last 20 years. And people are terrified because these numbers are increasing exponentially the last few years…
On the flip side the states with literally thousands, to tens of thousands of more bears… but allow and encourage well managed state liscenced hunting and population management… they have so many less encounters it’s not even funny, and some even haven’t reported a fatality in hundreds of years, no joke. Because bear populations are managed, dangerous bears or ones that come into a town and loose their fear are put down, and hunting is encouraged. Bears fear human interactions.
Let me put some numbers behind it…
State with the Smallest bear pop at about 1000 bears, no hunting no management, about 4000 encounters and multiple fatalities alone the last few years.
Largest bear populations but allowed management and hunting and good policy
6000 bears
7000 bears
A WHOPPING about 30,000 bears…
All three only have several hundred encounters over the same time frame with no fatalities in decades if not centuries.
It’s not rocket science, it’s not human = bad, it’s not just “they have no acorns” (seriously I teach in schools and the number of adults and students that think bears ONLY eat acorns is a bit insane to be honest) it doesn’t take a genius or f****** biologist to put together a magical package to solve the bear issue. It’s just common sense and a few things Japan does not like, better and fast acting policy, guns and hunting (unfortunately), so unfortunately unless the government is going to get serious about it, and peoples outcries and demand for logical meaning actually realistic and reasonable solutions becomes very loud. The bear problem will continue.
Edit: just to mention before someone gets mad… yes I’ve lived and currently live in Japan for almost 5 years now. And have friends and family (even Japanese) that are concerned greatly by this issue.
Bears don’t hibernate according to tax season. I think people are just not that risk averse here.
I mean, you’re talking about Japan, which is about the same size as the US east coast. With a population of roughly a little more than a 3rd of the US, but within less than a 1/20th of the size of the entire US, encounters are bound to happen
Perhaps it has to do with density of population of bear???
For some reason people are generally aware that there are multiple species of big cats (tigers, lions, cheetahs, etc), each with their own behavior and hunting habits, yet for these same people a bear is just a bear. This is not the case, there are multiple different species of bears. Japan and North America’s brown bears are the same species (different subspecies, though), but Japan’s black bears are a different species to North America’s black bears. _They’re different animals,_ albeit closely related ones. This article does cover it… but in a somewhat obtuse way, never even mentioning the word “species.” Regardless of the reason for their aggression (be it the tiger hypothesis or something else), Asian black bears are clearly more aggressive.
Anyways, more hunting is simply going to be necessary. If you have an increasing population of dangerous animals with no reason to fear humans… you are going to get attacks on humans.
Their kung fu is better than American kung fu
Americans are full of preservatives and sugar, Japanese full of sushi and rice. It’s a great dietary choice by the bears really.
Maybe Americans are more likely to have guns when they go to the woods. So if they encounter an aggressive bear, they shoot.
japan is the size of california…
I guess they dont kill the bear where as in N America attacking animals are killed to stop the passing of knowledge/skills.
Even with such a detailed explanation, why are there so many comments that don’t take it seriously? It was the same with the NYTimes article, I can only assume they’re underestimating bears.
I feel the article title is dumb because it’s like comparing a golf ball to a basketball. Japan’s landmass is much much smaller than in America so the true gauge would be to consider the Bear to Land mass of the area to determine what the Bear population is by the square foot rather than considering the overall Bear population.
145,900 square mile for Japan and 3.8 million for America.
We will use the high end so about 465k Bears in America and 44k in Japan. Nothing how if we take the square Mile into account we arrive at the following conclusion.
3.31 Bears per Square Mile in Japan compared to .122 Bears per square Mile in America.
Just because there is a different of 10-1 Bears in the US compared to Japan doesn’t matter when we take land mass into account. Even with these numbers however we are putting it under the assumption that Bears would live all over the country which also isn’t true however with that in mind it makes the situation in Japan even worse because if we take into consideration.
Japan’s landmass is potentially 29% cities whereas America is 3%. Those numbers are enough to explain why there would be an increased Bear attack in Japan compared to America.
Yeah I dunno percentages seem like a good choice here
They bears are trained assassin ninja
As the author finally gets to after a bunch of sensationalist bullshit, the vast majority of bears in North America live nowhere close to humans. Which also means they have less competition for food sources and more habitat in which to forage. Hokkaido is much, much more densely populated with bears than North America.
Due to demographics and culture, Japan has far more elderly people living in rural areas who aren’t in their car when they encounter a bear, which leads to more dangerous bear encounters.
Also, this article is largely an opinion piece with no data to corroborate it. “Bears in Japan have at times stalked humans for days on end and attacked with a ferocity that indicates a more predatory behavior than defensive, fighting harder and longer, charging repeatedly and bluffing less” is a statement with no basis in reality, relying entirely on vibes. The idea that an outlier year is “less of an anomaly and more of a return to the historical range” is also fully unsubstantiated considering the lack of corroborating, non-anecdotal data.
A sensationalist headline and lead-in based on vibes before the actual reasons, which are pretty mundane, are revealed? Sounds like a Japan Times “news” piece all right.
Get behind that paywall! /s
Just skimming this article, it seems to be way longer than it should be and takes forever to actually address the question.
US is about 26 times better so more room for bears to move around without people getting in the way.
this reminds me of Golden Kamuy ::)
It’s that they are allowed to florish
I live in the hills of Kobe Okamoto Kobe hyogo
The crows here run ramped and nothing is done to cull the amount (shitting everywhere,gomi attacks ,noise pollution etc)
So they run wild and effect everyones lives
* Honshu has has about ~40k black bears and over 100m people across 228k km^2 (population density of 447 per km^2 )
* British Columbia is rumoured to have over 100k black bears with 5m people across 944k km^2 (population density 5.4 per km^2 )
Oh yeah, it’s an impossible question indeed….
Bears like long intestines
Americans are full of fat and not tasty.
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