I've studied bears for a while now. There's actually a proven strategy for fighting polar bears. First you dodge to the left, then jump as high as you can and punch them in the eye. By the time they realize what's happened, it'll all be over and you'll be opening your eyes, hoping you prayed to the right god

You're finally awake !

Seems sound

The "say" makes it three syllables while the others are two so it doesn't flow

"if it's white, good night" flows better and it's more to the point since it's shorter anyway

I'd rather the bear than Shoggoths, Elder Things, or possibly a Great Old One!

I just assume Honey Badgers have earned the top rung. Seems safer to let them know we don't intend to fuck with them.

They fight to win. They use weapons beyond brute strength. They're clever.

Nah. I've seen larger women.

You fell for the bait.

But I learned so it's fine

you gotta nail the timing or else your shouryuu reppa misses

yeah if you put bears on antarctica they mutually annihilate

I knew it! Seeing them in a Zoo many years back I got the impression they were pretty big but not THAT massive.

I think the painting shows the largest they've found, not the norm. It's like showing Robert Wadlow (The tallest guy in the world at 8 ft 11.1 in (2.72 m) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Wadlow) to show the size of humans. Yes we can get that large, but it's an extreme example.

TIL I'm roughly the same height as the tallest ever the average a black bear 😁

So did the Greeks traverse the whole planet? Like the idea isn't too far fetched but it's just weird to think about Mediterraneans traveling to the arctics

I find it offensive that no one here has mentioned Rachel.

I saw this before somewhere and a commenter said they didn't actually know if there were bears or not in these places when they named them. This had more to do with the constellation Ursa (bear) major/minor (north star). But works out to being a nice mnemonic.

This has come up before on lemmy.

Wouldn’t a better translation given the context be something like the place opposite to the place where there are bears? It’s not like the Greeks somehow intuited that there was such a place and that there would be no bears there.

I saw a black bear in Virginia crossing the street on a polite Tuesday mid- morning a few years ago...the god-damned thing was as big as I imagined grizzly bears are...it was huge.

You forgot the crocodile 🐊

If one of the average sized ones rises up in front of you and roars, I bet it would look just as big as that painting.

Can anyone confirm? Probably not.

Fucking brilliant pull

It's the place opposite /ursa major/ (the great bear constellation, in the northern sky.) The name has nothing to do with actual bears (that's just good luck.)

Yup, Not many people get the opportunity to see one up close and live to tell about it, unless there's something REALLY solid in between them. Like that Nat Geo guy in the cage. https://youtu.be/U-S4NbX5IYE They're absolutely terrifying up close...

They don't typically roar tho, unless they're fighting or f..uh screwing. And they're not scared of anything.

Polar bears are also pretty big.

Has absolutely nothing to do with actual bears though.

The name comes from the constellation Ursa Major, which in Greek was Arktos Megale. Both mean the Great Bear.

Basically it just means north and not north because the Ursa Major constellation has the North Star in it.

It does just kinda work out that bears are in the northern hemisphere and not the southern hemisphere. There’s only one bear native to the southern hemisphere, the Spectacled Bear native to the Andes mountain in South America. There are no bears native to Africa or Oceania at all.

Because the name actually doesn’t have anything to do with real bears.

It was directional about the constellation Ursa Major (which in Greek is Arktos Megale).

There’s also Ursa Minor which is the little bear constellation, that contains the north star and is a great navigational tool.

Arctic and Antarctic basically just mean north and south.

And if you stood a Great Dane on their hind legs, they’re tall as shit too…

Just let it happen. If someone is looking at my stat sheet Im not going to complain if they say I can run 100 meters as fast as Bolt did in the Olympics. *limps to the kitchen..

The bear must be really big. Nobody is talking about her crab pants.

In German Baerbel is a woman's name. And you say Baer if you mean beaver. The more you know. 🤷‍♀️

Lol.

Beaver is also a slang term for female genitalia in English

Would they have called that constellation Ursa Major if not for the presence of bears in that direction? Maybe the constellation naming was like, "don't go too far towards bear country if you don't want to deal with bears that think of humans as food." "Bears this way. Bears ahead."

Cave bears used to make polar bears look small.

This would be a female bear, as she is with her cubs. Polar bears are actually the second most sexually dimorphic mammal. Consequently males are vastly bigger than females.

The most sexually dimorphic? The elephant seal. Those dudes are immense.

Edit: this, I read on wikipedia a couple of years ago. The information is no longer there but the fact that polar bears and elephant seals are among the most dimorphic mammals remains. The precise ranking is perhaps a little more obscure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_bear

There were bears all over Europe. They were a huge part of Greek and Roman mythology. They didn’t know anything about polar bears at the time.

Bears have been important in many cultures, and Ursa Major is depicted as a bear in many non-Greek cultures as well, going back to prehistory.

Many North American indigenous tribes depict it as a bear, long before European contact. Same with pre-Islamic Arabian cultures.

It was named because the constellation looks like a bear, not because it pointed to where bears were. Even Native Americans called that constellation a bear, and they had bears south of them.

It's ok, he has a contact with the girl.

If it's brown lay down
If it's black fight back
If it's white say goodnight

There's a reason why they say that

They used to have some at my local zoo when I was a kid. Now knowing this, I'd like to see one in person again. Obviously to a kid they looked fucking huge, but I'd like to see one in person as an adult now knowing this. It's definitely better that my zoo decided they didn't have a big enough enclosure and stopped getting polar bears, but it kinda sucks too.

The first black bear I ever saw in the wild was this beefy boi. Fucker was huge. Didn't see him on his hind legs, but I would imagine he was close to 6' if he did stand on them.

They're all talk though.

There's gonna be a fatality one way or another, but probably one way in particular

Koala bear,

Check mate athiests

/s

I guess there’s a good reason the movie, The Edge, was set in Alaska instead of Antarctica.

It's more of a translation-based mnemonic device, really

guys pls stop downvoting this comment, it made me feel good to see it in my inbox, i dont want people to feel afraid to give one or two word nice comments.

Santa Barbara zoo?

Big bastards best stay away lest they suffer double nipple twisters.

There's reasons in rural communities in Canada that polar bears frequent that it is custom to keep your car doors unlocked at all times, so if someone walking runs into a polar bear they can dive into a random car for safety.