"Bear feeding Frenzy" tv show? wtf?

[uppityperson]

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2008582042_bear02.html

Put a TV soap star in a plastic box in the bear pen at the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center, tie a dummy alongside, turn loose the bears, roll video and what do you get?

Controversy. A storm of it has been building since a program called "Bear Feeding Frenzy" first appeared on the Discovery Channel.

State wildlife biologists call the self-proclaimed "documentary" misleading and worse. The bear expert who worked with the filmmakers said he got snookered, and some average citizens — taken in by the show's appearance of having been filmed in the wild — are outraged that television producers would be teaching grizzlies to attack lifelike dummies, tear into tents and break into SUVs.

"I was horrified as I watched this guy sitting in a 'predator-proof' Plexiglas box ultimately train wild grizzly bears to maul a mannequin, break into a car and tear down tents while he is yelling 'hey bear ... hey bear.' What do you suppose will happen when one of these 'conditioned' bears steps out on a gravel bar with a hiker or fisherman who calmly tries to yield ground while saying, 'hey bear'?" Alaska angler Jim Hamblet said....(more)

I don't get Discovery Channel, hadn't heard of this yet but all I have to say is WTF? This is stupid on so many accounts.

[Blue_In_AK]

1. Disgusting, isn't it?

The bears have a bad enough reputation without this garbage.

[DaCagedBear]

2. Wow

Ok, first off the grizzly bear is by far my most favorite animal in the world. They are amazing animals that humans have just messed with and look what happens. Do I feel sorry for any human that gets mauled or killed by one of these bears? HELL NO! Now about the show, if any SMART human being that watched the show (where is a smart human being located in this world?) then they would have seen that these grizzlies were NOT free ranging bears!! It says this right before the show starts after a few commercials, to remind people that these are NOT FREE RANGING GRIZZLIES! Every different scenario had the same exact bears coming into the scene. These bears are not roaming around where people camp. They obviously are roaming a wildlife preserve or "park". Same with the black bears going into the vehicle. They are NOT teaching "wild" grizzlies to tear down tents or maul mannequins. These bears on the show are no wilder than the stray cats and dogs running around town at night. Think about it, why would they put human food out for the bears taking????????? DUH!!! Remember a fed bear is a dead bear!! This is not rocket science!!!! JEEZ I can't believe how stupid the human race is. Unbelievable!!!!! I'm sure they are teaching the "wild" grizzlies of grizzly discovery center in west yellowstone to get into dumpsters and tear into tents as well!

[Ken Burch]

3. Sounds like some of the stuff Walt Disney used to do for his "True Life Adventure" films

(If you went to grade school in the 50's or 60's, you probably saw them).

William O. Douglas talked about what Disney did to animals in "Go East, Young Man" the first part of his memoirs.

Remember the famous scene in which the two rams knocked horns in time to the "Anvil Chorus". They never actually attack each other that frequently or aggressively. To get the rams to do that, according to Douglas, Disney kept them in a zoo in Los Angeles for a month without food.

On a more benign note, the famous "lemming mass suicide" scene was actually ping pong balls being fired off a cliff with air guns. No actual lemmings chose to end it all in the making of that sequence.

This series seems to show that this notion of using animals sadistically for entertainment has not died out, even in "civilized" North America.

[Blue_In_AK]

4. I didn't know that about the rams.

That's really disturbing.