Shock footage shows bears breaking into homes and OPENING car door – 'They're clever'
BRAZEN bears behind a shocking break-ins at an upmarket ski resort reveal they don't only use woods as toilets.
Black bear breaks into home in North America
More break-ins are being committed by real-life Yogi Bears in the famous Rockies mountain retreat of Aspen than by human burglars as they go on the rampage for food scraps. The damage the bears leave behind is laid bare in a new television documentary from the BBC’s Natural History Unit. A clip released for this Sunday’s episode of Cities: Nature’s New Wild shows the bears tearing open cars, emptying fridges and even playing the piano when they go on the prowl.
The bears’ scary antics are driven by the need to consume up to 20,000 calories a day to lay down enough fat to see them through their winter hibernation.
For the intelligent and highly adaptive black bear, urban living has many advantages for scavenging.
Although refuse bins are made bear-proof in the Colorado resort, for a dextrous animal with a sense of smell 100 times more acute than a human, sniffing out food left in vehicles or inside homes reaps rich pickings.
Charlie Martin, the Aspen police force’s wildlife officer, tells the programme: “Bears have done a lot of damage over the years.
"They are pretty clever and they have learned to open a door handle of a vehicle.”
Once inside, they can cause thousands of dollars of damage while clawing at every cranny for something to eat.
The bears also show that their lavatorial habits are not confined to woods.
An amused Mr Martin said: “It will rip the door panels off and will also leave a present in there… It’s very unpleasant.”
Black bears are steeped in American history.
Teddy bears became popular soft toys when US President Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt refused to kill a trapped black bear during a hunting trip to Mississippi in 1902.
A cartoon of the incident inspired inventor Morris Michtom to create a toy bear in his honour and a legend was born.
Black bears also inspired Hanna-Barbera’s cartoon character Yogi — “the smarter than the average bear” — who made himself a nuisance raiding the picnic baskets of visitors to Jellystone Park.
While black bears are powerful predators, fatal attacks on humans are incredibly rare.
On average, there is around one person killed annually in the United States compared to an estimated 17,000 homicides.
Cities: Nature’s New Wild. BBC TWO, Sunday, January 6, 9pm.