Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - What the F**k is Going On With Japan's Bears?

Episode Date: December 15, 2025

Japan has been seeing a higher-than-usual rate of violent encounters with bears. Wes explains why that might be and what should be done about it. Watch here: https://youtu.be/EnkSTRJoVxE ~~ Smalls: For a limited time, get 60% off your first order, plus free shipping, when you head to http://Smalls.com/TOOTH Aura Frames: Exclusive $35 off Carver Mat at https://on.auraframes.com/TOOTH Promo Code TOOTH Hollow Socks: For a limited time, Hollow Socks is having a Buy 2, Get 2 Free Sale—head to https://Hollowsocks.com for up to 50% off your order. #HollowSockspod Quince: Go to http://Quince.com/tooth for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. LMNT: Get a free 8-count Sample Pack with any purchase at http://drinklmnt.com/tooth ~~ To advertise on the show, contact us! Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/c/toothandclawpodcast ~~ Tooth & Claw is brought to you by QCODE. Support the show and get access to an extensive library of exclusive episodes like this by supporting the show on Patreon or joining the Grizzly Club on Apple Podcasts. For the latest updates on the show and all things wildlife, follow us at toothandclawpod.com and social:  Instagram: @ToothandClawPodcast Twitter: @ToothandClawPod Wes: @GrizKid Jeff: @jefe_larson Mike: @mikey3ds Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome everyone to Tooth and Claw podcast. We have our bear biologist, Wes Larson. I am his younger brother. I was a field tech for bears. I'm pretty much a bear biologist by now. Pretty much not. And we have Mike Smith, who is our sound tech. Sound guy.

Sound guy. Master diver. Yeah. That's what's up. Just all around good guy. He's sick today, too. He's not feeling good. I try to be, yeah.

I really try to be good, not sick. Sorry, I kind of. What if you did just try to be sick all the time? There's people that do that, right? Yeah. Because I think that's Munchausen syndrome, and then there's Munchausen's by proxy, which is where someone keeps you sick

because they like taking care of you or whatever. I don't know. Okay. But I had that, don't listen to me. I don't know any of this. A little bit growing up I had the exaggerate an injury or whatever. Like, if I, like, rolled back,

my ankle at recess, I'd like limp really exaggerate my limp the rest of the day so people would be like, oh, are you okay? Yeah, that's just being a dude. That's what we do. You know who does that a lot is Shea Gilgis, Alexander. He's always trying to make people think he's hurt.

Sick, trying to get those free throws. Yeah, maybe he has that thing. Munchel. The second we brought up like a syndrome, it made me think, uh, someone's going to comment. and be like, actually, that's not what that is. We have no idea with this one. So just feel free to leave your comments.

Leave us alone. Whatever. Yeah. Me and Mike did a little bonus thing for sports. We talked about sports. Nice. And he wanted my 25 best athletes of the 20th century. 21st century.

So far. Yeah, 21st century. Yeah. That's what it is. No, since like the millennium. Right. Right. The 21st century.

2,000th millennium so far. Yeah. Sure. 2000th millennium. Now, that'd be 20,000. When you're talking centuries, you're always one ahead of the one year in. No, but it's also the 20th century. It's like the 20th and the 24th.

We can't do this. We can't publish you saying this. Am I wrong? This is really going to shoot all credibility out the window for all three of us. I wanted. I wanted you to guess my five best athletes of the past one. Steph Curry's number one. No, he didn't make top five.

What? I know. It's shocking. All right. LeBron James. No, he's behind Steph. Oh, okay. Tom Brady.

Yeah, he's number one. Top five. Okay. Hamilton in F1. He made the list, but he didn't get top five. Okay. I'm done guessing. Tell me your others.

All right. Tiger Woods was like number four. Number two was Rinaldo. Cristiano Rinaldo. I like the order you're doing this in. I kind of forgot the top five. I'm realizing. There's one, two, and four for everyone that's interested. Get a Patreon subscription to hear the rest. Jokovic, I think, was maybe five. What about Messi? Is he in there?

Messi was six. Okay. Oh, Hussein Bolt was in the top five. All right. That's right. Fastest man that's ever lived. That's got to make top five. That's more impressive than Curry.

All right. That's cool. Well, I can't wait to listen to it. It's a good list. I was shocked at how he had one person in there is all that I dis, well, so I guess we should. I shouldn't even talk more about this. We're so far off the rails, but it was a 25 best male athletes of the 21st century. And then we're going to come back and do 25 best female athletes in the follow-up.

I think Serena's got to be number one for female athletes. That's just my. Yeah. All right. Well, you guys, we've been talking about bears a lot lately. And we're going to do it again today. And that's because this is kind of like an emergency episode. I know a lot of movie podcasts are doing emergency episodes right now about the Netflix merger.

We are doing it about something kind of crazy that's going on in the bear world. And I don't want to call it unprecedented because we've kind of got like a summer of the shark thing going on here. and we'll talk about that a little bit. Don't tell me Netflix is buying all the bears. They're buying out all the bears. Yep. Old Ted Sarandos needs to. Netflix owns all the bears now.

He's going to make them all CG bears. Oh, God. Every bear when it's in a new scene, is going to say exactly what it's doing and why it's there. And all the bears are going to finish each other's sentences. It'll be kind of convenient to, like, be able to see the bears from home and not have to go to national parks. Yeah. No one likes national parks. Everyone likes just being in their house.

Right. All right. Okay. We're going to start out with a little story. In early October this year, a man in his 70s got up early in his home. In the Iwate. Oh, really quick. Quick disclaimer.

There are a lot of Japanese names in this episode. And I am just going to do kind of bad on them. I'm sorry. I'm not great at pronouncing those correctly because I am so used to Latin languages. So I'm sorry in advance. I'm just apologizing. Okay. I don't really care.

Yeah. In the Iwate Prefecture, that's not even the Japanese French. On the Honshu Island of Japan. Okay, so really quickly again, we're going to be talking about two islands in Japan. Honshu is kind of what you picture is the main island in Japan, the big kind of crescent-shaped one, where you're going to find Tokyo, a lot of the famous places you hear about in Japan. We're also going to be talking about Hokka, a little. bit, which is the northern island north of Honshu, but we're mostly going to be on Honshu for this episode. Does all of Japan count as islands? Yes, it is an archipelago, is consisted completely

of islands. Well, I mean, at a certain point, you're so big. It's not like Australia is Australia and Ireland. It's a good point, Jeff. I don't know where you draw the line. North and South America is just one big island. Huge island. Yeah. All right. This man was a mushroom picker, and he was heading out to do the same thing you did most autumn days, which was go into the nearby forest and look for delicious and valuable mushrooms. Iwate is famous for the different varieties of rare mushrooms that grow in shady, damp spots in this forest, and mushroom pickers can actually do pretty well in the fall foraging for mushrooms to either use for themselves or to sell for a profit. This guy makes his morning tea, he grabs his basket,

his rain boots, his overcoat, and he walks out the door. When he didn't return that even, evening, his family starts to become worried, and they call the authorities. When he wasn't back the next morning, their worry had changed to an all-out fear. Searchers continued to try and locate this man, and then the news that this family had been dreading finally arrives. The mushroom picker's body had been discovered, and nearby, his decapitated head was also found. Whoa. Scratch marks and other evidence almost immediately pointed toward a non-human culprit, and one more person was added to the double-divated. list of humans that have been killed by bears in Japan in 2025.

Oh, man. I thought maybe it's Mexican cartel. It wasn't a cartel. Yeah, he was stuffed in some tires. Because our forest service cousin Brent was saying whenever there's like a big forest fire, the next year like morel mushrooms and stuff will grow. Yeah. He's like the cartels will get in there and not let people in to pick them.

Yeah. Oh, man. Those are valuable. I listened to Paul Stamance. He said, keep your eye on those morels. Mycelium running. So the story of rising bear attacks in Japan has been in the news a lot this summer and fall. A lot of people have sent us the story.

People have been requesting it a lot, especially people that live in that part of the world. And we decided that it was probably time to do an episode completely dedicated to the story. It's going to be kind of like a news episode. there's going to be a lot of information about a new animal for us, but it's just going to be kind of an atypical episode. And again, I do think even though this has been reported on a lot, we're kind of in the summer of the shark territory here, where I think because it's been popular, these stories,

a lot of more news agencies, a lot more news agencies are grabbing onto it and reporting about it. And it's not that it's like that crazy of a year compared to some of the previous years. But it is crazy. Yeah. Okay. But it's not totally unprecedented.

Okay. Yeah. So. Another tattoo bet for next year. If there's more bear attacks or not. I don't. Yeah. I think I would pick less next year, but you never know.

All right. So the best place to start, I think, is to give you all some statistics on what has been happening this year in Japan. And something that's a quick disclaimer, something I've found when it comes to East Asian countries and reporting on stories that could potentially affect. perceptions of their countries or overall tourism, it's often hard to find a lot of relevant details or sometimes even like it's really hard to access the actual government reporting. So most of the information I'm going to be sharing comes from mainstream media, unfortunately.

I have found a few papers, a few better sources, but I've done my best to sort out what feels legitimate and true because there is a lot of crazy reporting out there. As we all know. We do. And Jeff, do we believe it? So you need like real crazy ones? Oh, yeah. There's some crazy stuff.

A lot of AI taking over this story, unfortunately. I'm hit or miss if I believe the crazy ones. Yeah. Okay. Doesn't it kind of feel like we just live in a world full of J. Jonah Jamesons these days? Oh, boy. Just everyone is a J. Jonah. You are here the newest conspiracy theory that's been getting pumped in my algorithm?

Sure. that the Titanic was like rigged, that they crashed it on purpose and it wasn't even the Titanic. I've heard that one. Oh, I didn't know that it wasn't. There's like different versions of it. There's one real crazy one where it's like that wasn't even the Titanic that sucked. So as of December 6th when I was doing my research, there had been 230 total attacks on humans that caused injuries, which is a crazy number, since April of this year, including 13 fatalities, which breaks the 2023 to 2024 record for a total number of attacks, which was

219 with six fatalities. Whoa. They do like their year goes kind of a weird. What's that kind of year, not a calendar year, but a fiscal? Fiscal year. That's what it is. It goes from like March to April of the next year or something. It's kind of weird.

So that's when these stats are taken. They seem crazy, but Japan definitely has to be one of the top three countries in the world for overall bear attack numbers. I would put them up there with India and probably Romania would be the other one or Russia. They really only started keeping a central database on bear attacks in 2006. But since that database has been kept, this year is definitely the worst year when it comes to attacks and fatalities. People are always saying America's number one. And it's like education, we're not, mathematics, we're not, you know, fair tax, we're not, healthcare, we're not. Super Bowls we are.

Military we are, I think. You are for Super Bowls. Yeah. Yeah. Military spending. Yeah. Depression probably. Nooks.

Okay. I wonder. Yeah. Nukes. Okay. So even though there is an argument that this year is probably more online with the stats that were more common throughout the 1900s and before data was collected and reported. But it's impossible to say, and that's not to detract from the point that there really are a lot of bear attacks happening this year in Japan. But there have

been, you know, in past years in 2014, they had a huge year. Two years ago, they had a huge year. So this is the most, but it's not by like a massive margin. At first, I didn't think it was real. I woke up to this blinding light and I was transported to another place. Pluto TV. Then I heard voice. Come with me if you want to live. There were thousands of movies and shows, and they were all free. The truth is our scene. It's just so

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Black. Azotic black. Jeff? Me too. Good job. I think if you replaced all their Asiatic black bears with grizzly bears, there'd be even more attacks, but the Asianatic black bears just live in closer proximity. You might be right, but I really don't know because these are very aggressive little bear.

Yep. So we really haven't. talked a lot about Asiatic Black Bear as much on the podcast, but they are the species that is by far responsible for the lion's share of attacks. That's confusing. I shouldn't use that. What animal are we talking about? Wes.

Come on. For the bear's share of attack. For the, nah, yeah. In the Japanese archipelago. You think they're like the worst named bear? Asiatic Black Bear? Yeah. No, I think sloth bears are the worst named bear.

Oh. Yeah. pretty easily for me. Their nickname is Moon Bear. I was just about to ask. Yeah. Because that's cool. That's way better.

Yeah. And we'll talk about why that is. The Asiatic Black Bear, I mean, ours are just American Black Bear. So it's like, if one of them's bad, the other one's bad, you know? And ours get more. And these ones are at least almost always black. Yeah. Ours can often be pretty brown.

Okay. So about 97% of the attacks this year involved Asiatic Black Bears. Wow. The attacks from this species, happened all over Hanchu Island primarily, but Iwate and Akita Prefecture have the most fatalities with five and four people dying in those areas respectively. So a total of nine between those two prefectures. Am I saying that right? Prefecture? Prefecture. Prefecture. I think you're saying it just fine. I was saying Prefecture. I wouldn't change the single thing about you. I'm saying it like

Paul Hollywood would say it. Been watching. Thanks, Mike. All right. I'm on the semifinals finally. Oh, really? Yeah. My guy just got eliminated. Ah, that was so sad. Yeah. You were real worried about that guy. I was, you asked me the guy I was worried about because I told you that my favorite guy got eliminated in the first episode of Bake Off.

He's that. I forget his name. He kind of sounded like a Muppet. Yeah. I love that guy. Yeah. I wanted him to last forever. He seems so friendly.

Oh, man. They have the best casting director in the world. Whoever does it. They're so good. All right. quick question for you guys how big of fans are you of the dream star fighting marigold which is the japanese women's professional wrestling league huge well i can't say that i'm trying to get in on this sports conversation with you guys yeah picked a good how big are you into dream star fighting marigold

well we'll save that for the top 25 women right they'll make up five or six of those i'm sure but no they're um those they're insane i've seen some clips of women wrestlers over there yeah They're going bigger than the men a lot of times. It's so impressive. I watched a little bit myself. Well, if you were big fans, you probably would have heard the name Katsumi Sasazaki before. This was a 60-year-old man who had been a mainstay referee for Dreamstar Fighting Marigold. But he had recently retired from the league.

In October this year, he'd been living a much quieter life, working at a local Hot Springs resort as a cleaner. But on the morning of October 16th, Katsumi had gotten to work doing some cleaning around an outdoor hot Springs bath that made a part of this resort. And as he approached the bath, he was unaware that a large Asiatic Black Bear was also near this bath and was searching the grounds for any kind of food resources that might be around. Katsumi and the bear surprised each other, but only one of them would leave this encounter. Hot Spring would be such a good place for a bear to look for food. It's kind of like a human going to a hot pot. Just get them all boiled up in that water. Leard River Hot Springs attack, which is like one of the craziest bear attacks of all time.

Yeah, hot springs I guess the lesson here is don't ever go to hot spring If you're scared of bears Jeff I'm not scared of bears You can go to hot springs I'm scared of hot springs Just wait until I'm done with this story

We'll see What if the Have you seen Dante's peak? Oh yeah I'm afraid of hot springs That's true You should be At least they died having sex

You know Those two Okay Yeah that really affected me When I saw that So wait Too much in a lot of ways. He's pretty good wrestler, I'd imagine.

I know he's just the ref, but he must kind of know. Probably. Stuff. He knows his game. So I'm giving him, you left us on a cliffhanger. One of them doesn't make it out. Yeah. I feel like it could go either way.

Yep. You're wrong. Around 1115 that morning, Katsumi's supervisor became concerned because Katsumi hadn't reported back in after his morning cleanings. and he called the police. When they went to her Katsumi had been working, they found shattered cleaning materials,

the signs of a struggle, some bear fur, and concerningly a lot of blood, both on the ground and on a fence that was surrounding the bath. It was evident that Katsumi had been attacked by a bear and dragged into the nearby woods, so a coalition of about 30 people that was made up of police,

local officials, and a local hunting association launched a search for Katsumi. But that search was called off after about 30 minutes because of inclement weather, which is like, how bad is that weather? It's got to be a, you have to call off a search for a typhoon. Yeah. Which I don't know,

maybe that's not totally out of the question. I know sometimes some real bad weather hits, but. I guess I don't want to point fingers, but if this attack just happened a few hours ago, there's a chance this guy's still alive, you know? Yeah, sure. And that if you go find him, you can stop him from dying. But yeah, again, we don't know the exact conditions.

If you get too wet, though, you can, there's like a pretty good chance you get sick. Yeah, that's true. If you don't shower. I guess they had the hot springs right there. They got the hot springs right there. For me, the worst weather would be if it were just really sunny out. I'd be like, I'm waiting for a storm to blow through before I go out there. If you were on the team, they could like put you in once that storm came in.

They'd be like, oh, we got a guy for this. Just like a wrestler, a tag team wrestler. Slap my hand, I'm in. Again, I don't want to be too judgmental, but it would make a lot more sense to me if they were searching at night and they had to call it off because of weather, but this was during the day. So it doesn't make a lot of sense.

Sure. But then the next morning, the searchers did make the grim discovery of Katsumi's body in the woods on the bank of a nearby river. His body had been badly mauled and dismembered by this bear. So this is the kind of news that's coming out of Japan this year. And these are the types of stories that have just a handful of them happen in the U.S. We would be, you know, the news would be overloaded with them. And this is every single day in Japan.

They're getting stories about attacks. So we need to talk a little bit about Asiatic Black Bears. Just to get an idea of the animal we're working with. Professionally, this isn't a bear that I've worked with. And I have colleagues that have worked with them a bit. But I haven't really been to a lot of conferences and whatnot where we talk a lot about Asiatic Black Bears. So I already had a fair amount of basic knowledge about the species part of the episode,

but I'm kind of learning along with you guys, which is fun because it's a bear and I love learning about bears. All right. They are generally considered. Actually, I'm going to ask you guys, as far as size is considered, where do you think this bear falls in the eight bear species? I mean, I'm just going to think like the American black bear, but just an Asian version of it. Yeah, so where would it be?

So maybe a little bit slightly smaller? So what would that make it size-wise number? So polar bears are number one, brown bears and number two. Those are the two easy ones. After that, what do you think is number three? American, or sloth bear, three. Wrong. American black bear, you had it.

And then number four? Soft bears can be as big as American black bears. They're smaller. On average, they're quite a bit smaller. The one we saw was really floofy, but I don't know how that correlates to wait. Big old floofy soft bear for sure. All right. Then I'll go Azeeatic Black Bear 4.

That's what I would guess. Correct. And Sloth Bear number 4. Then Andy and Bears number 5. Sloth bear is 6. Sun bear is 7. Giant panda is 8. Pantas are the smallest bear?

On average. Yeah. Sun bear. I thought so too, but everyone reports it as being giant pandas. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me. But anyway. I think they got a lot of hair. Okay.

Sure. They generally have a white or cream-colored crescent moon pattern on their chest, which earned them their nickname of Moon Bear. The rest of the bear is black, aside from a lighter colored muzzle and sometimes some white around their lips or under their chin. They often have a large hairy mane of longer black hair all around their face, and then they generally have really large ears that are much rounder than those of the American black bear, and further down on the side of their head. So they kind of look like a Mickey Mouse bear almost. Adult males on average are going to weigh around 300 pounds,

or 135 kilograms, and adult females around 200 pounds or 90 kilograms. The biggest Asiatic Black Bears can be up to like 450 pounds, so they don't have nearly the range that American black bears have. Like American black bears on average are probably even a little smaller, but they can get up to like 800 pounds, so they can be quite a bit bigger on the upper end. But like Americans are fatter than Japanese people. Yeah, without a doubt.

Like the people. So like our bears are getting into our food and their bears are getting into their food. Yeah. Yeah. Our bears are getting like Twinkies and pizza and their bears are getting like ramen and rice. Fish, sushi. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. They're like fish again. This is what I eat in the freaking wilderness. That's why their fur is so sheenie, shiny and clean. Sheenie? Seenie shiny. All right. It is important to mention that these bears, though,

Asiatic black bears are found in many different places. with different food sources. So there's a lot of variation in their size still. And their overall morphology, which is kind of all their physical characteristics, is going to vary a lot depending on where you find them. So in some places, there are going to be these big, fluffy, big, Asiatic Black Bears like in Russia or in Iran, you're going to find a much sleek or smaller-looking bear. Okay.

Our American black bears, they're going to have shorter curved claws, which are really good for what? Climmon. Clamberin. Climmon. These are clamberin, climbing bears. Shelling stachios. Yeah. Also good for shelling pistachios.

They are a very arboreal bear, and they spend up to 50% of their lives in trees, even more maybe. For that reason, they're almost always found in forested regions in the countries throughout their range. Their range is quite large. They're widespread throughout the South, Southeast, and East Asia. So South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia, and. East Asia, they can be found in 18 different countries, all the way from southeast Iran to the islands of Honshu and Shokoku in Japan. Holy cow.

Yeah. How'd they get out to those islands? Swim? Swim? Swimming? That's a good question. Stowing away. Land bridges, back when there's land bridges.

Jeff, what do you got? Iceberg? What's going on in that brain of years? Ice bridges? Sure. Yeah. Icebergs. Icebergs?

Yeah. Right. Well, how do the polar bears get to Iceland? They swim. Huh? Or they ride ice flows. Yeah. The polar bears are used to that.

They kind of, that's part of their natural history. So it makes sense to you that they're differentiating between just, for example, the North American black bear or American black bear and the Asiatic black bear, whereas the brown bear is just categorized the same everywhere. That's, it's pretty obvious to your brain why that is. Yes. And actually, that's great. Perfect timing, Mike. Yeah, why aren't they Asian brown bears? What I was just about to talk about.

So this bear is considered the most similar to what is thought to be the common ancestor of the old world bears. So when we're talking old world bears, we're talking about brown bears, Asiatic black bears, sun bears, sloth bears. We're not really counting giant pandas because they're kind of their own thing. This bear is the most like that common ancestor. It's derived the least from it. it's diverged the least from it. And it's thought that they and American black bears first diverged about three million years ago. So they were the same bear and they, you know, evolved into different bears.

The reason they are their own species is because during that time, enough genetic changes happened to them to separate them into their own species. With brown bears, that just hasn't happened. So even though we have brown bears throughout the world and they can look quite different, those brown bears could still mate. They're still similar enough that they aren't their own species yet. They're different subspecies, but they're not their own species. I wonder if the black bears could mate. There's a good chance of it.

Yeah, I don't know. It sounds like polar bears and grizzlies can mate. Three million years is quite a bit. And polar bears and grizzlies, we think it might have just been a few hundred thousand years that they diverged. So that might be too long, but we'll see. We'll see once we made them. That'll be our first live stream. Once like Japan floats all the way over to United States.

Yeah. That's the way it's even going. Yeah. Or a big tsunami will pick up some of their bears and push them on to our shores. That'd be so nice. All right. Would it? Like for the bears?

It'd be kind of a fun ride. Are you serious? Like our black bears, they're highly omnivorous and opportunistic. And most of what they eat is going to be vegetation and masts. So when we talk about masks, we're talking about like nuts, acorns, those kind of things. Pistachios. Yeah, pistachios. Yeah, they got those claws.

This is all adding up. In Japan, they eat a high variety of different foods, including acorns, beech nuts, wild berries, bamboo shoots, insects, insects, grasses, and roots. It's thought that beech nut trees are potentially the most important food source for Asiatic Black Bears in Japan because they eat the nuts from the trees in the late summer and fall, but they also eat the young leaves, the buds, and other parts of this tree throughout the year. They do occasionally kill other animals for food in Japan, which are going to be mostly ungulates. And meat comprises varying percentages of their diet depending on which part of their range you might be in. So like the ones in Russia might be eating more meat than the ones in India. You just never really know. Well, you do know, but I don't know which are the most meat eaters.

From what I could tell, the ones in Japan get most of their meat from deer and wild boar gut piles that are left behind by. hunters. Well, those deer like bow to you too. That's true. And that's kind of messed up. For a bear. Yeah.

Right. So like, hey, I respect you and the bear is in Yitz him. Eat some. Yeah. Well, they're mostly, they're mostly scavenging gut piles that have been left by human hunters. And I didn't really realize that there is a pretty robust hunting culture in Japan, but it's one that's dying out with, with modern generations.

Okay. In Japan, a lot of Asiatic Black Bears have started eating human food as well. That ranges from everything for them raiding crops and orchards to breaking into homes or even grocery stores. We did that story on one of our news episodes of that bear that was in a grocery store and they, like, called in the SWAT team and couldn't get it out for days. Okay. What are they doing? Just tranquilize it. It's like one of those things where it's like, I could.

I could get it out of there. Yeah. And that's, I do think that, I do. I think he could. I do think that's part of the issue here, the larger issue. And we're going to talk about this at length later. But I think that the system of wildlife management there is very different from how we do it in North America.

And they just don't have a lot of like specialty wildlife bear experts that are on the ground managing. They have a lot of really smart bear biologists, but a lot of the actual management is done by law enforcement, and they are not trained for it. So they just don't, they kind of fumble a lot. LinkedIn is pretty amazing at helping you grow your small business. We cannot make your email response time faster. We can help you sell, market, and hire in one place. We cannot help you find space for your three desk drinks. Why do you have three? And while we can't help you find the perfect volume for your presentation video. LinkedIn can help you find the perfect audience for your business.

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Welcome to your ocean front room. Just steps from the water. The Hilton sale is on now. Book on Hilton.com or the Hilton app and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected. When you want savings, not surprises. It matters where you stay. Hilton, for the stay. Okay, their reproductive cycles vary similar to our Black Bears. They have delayed implantation. The females enter maternal dens and they come out of those dens in the spring with their new cubs. Whether or not they hibernate really depends on where you find them. If the weather is cold and snowy in the the winter, they will hibernate.

Some places where there's scarce food in the winter, they're going to hibernate and reemerge in the spring. And throughout a lot of their range in Japan, they do hibernate. You could say that about our black bears, too? Yeah, exactly. Like in Florida, Mexico, there's places where they're not really going to hibernate because they don't really need to. But always the pregnant female bears will go into dens to have their cubs in the winter.

There's a fair amount of human bear conflict with this species. and a lot of that conflict is in Japan. However, unlike American black bears, where a lot of the attacks, and especially the deaths from American black bears, are going to be predatory, and them investigating people as food, almost all the attacks attributed to Asiatic black bears

seem to be defensive in nature. And that explains why there's so many conflicts in Japan. Some experts think that there's over 40,000 Asianic black bears on the islands of Honshu and Shukoku. Holy cow. Yeah, it's a lot. On those same two islands, there are roughly 108 million people, making it one of the most densely populated places in the world

when you're looking at both humans and bears. So pretty crazy. I mean, it's like a really high density for bears, and then it's a really high density for people. So there's a fair amount of potential for conflict, and it makes sense why it's happening. Is that, so with that many bears, I'm not as familiar as maybe I should be at this point with bear behavior.

but are they territorial to the point where that many bears is going to be pushing them into further into places where they just traditionally haven't been historically? It's a great question. And yeah, they are. The thing that really affects territoriality with a lot of bear species is food availability. So like with brown bears in Alaska where they can all sit on a salmon stream and there's tons of food for everyone, they're not very territorial because they don't really have to defend their resources. But if food is scarce and there's not a ton of food, they're going to

become much more territorial. And the bears that can't compete are going to have to start taking advantage of alternative food resources. And that's really what's happening. And we're going to talk a lot more about that. And is having that many bears and humans in the same island going to overwork the bees? Yeah, the bees are just like, guys, I need a break. I can't feed all these mouths. Yeah. That's a good question. The bees need a union.

Bees never get to keep their honey. You're probably right. What are the bees even doing with the honey, though? Do they eat it? What are they doing? They got to deal with Godzilla, too. The bees? What if Godzilla smashes their beehives?

You know? It is a real, it's a wild daisy chain of interspecies symbiosis. symbiosis. We're disrupting with this many bears, it turns out. Yeah. Plus, there's another bear species in Japan. Brown bears are found on the island of Hokkaido, and they have been attacking people as well. This year, two people were killed by brown bears in Hokkaido. One was a newspaper man that was dragged away by the bear in front of his neighbors while he was delivering newspapers, and he was found later partially consumed and killed in some bushes.

And police actually responded to that attack and killed. killed a bear days later, but they probably got the wrong bear based on what I read about this story. The other brown bear fatality involved a 26-year-old hiker that wanted to visit his family's ancestral home in the mountains of Hokkaido. As he left for his journey, his mom warned him to be careful, and those would actually be the last word she would ever say to her son. A day or two later, his parents turned on the TV to hear the story of a young hiker

being killed by bears on Mount Rauzu. Oh wow, that's a crazy way to find out. Yeah, it was the same mountain their son had been scheduled to hike that day. They then got a phone call from their son's friend who informed them that their son had been dragged off the trail by a female brown bear with her cub. He'd heard his friend screaming ahead on the trail at about 11 a.m. And when he ran ahead, he saw him being dragged down a steep slope by a large bear that was actively mauling him.

Both the bear and the 26-year-old disappeared into the woods and his body was recovered the morning. He had an invisibility cloak. That is not what happened. So while there have been a higher than average number of brown bear conflicts as well, when we're talking about this current, you know, bear issue in Japan, we're really mostly talking about Asiatic Black Bears. And they're getting really, really bold. There's CCTV video that was recently circulated of an elderly woman in Akita Prefecture, being attacked in broad daylight on a neighborhood road while she was on a walk. It's kind of a crazy video.

This woman's just walking down the road, and this bear just like barrels into her. She kind of deflects it, actually, and the bear spins to the other side. It hits her again, and then it runs up a tree. And honestly, had this woman fallen over, I think it would have ended a lot differently. But because she didn't,

and I think there was oncoming traffic, the bear actually runs away. It bumped her twice and she stood her ground. Yeah, someone needs to sign her, you know? She should be like a roller derby team. Sumo. Yeah, defensive linemen. Yeah.

Or she'd be good on American gladiators. Dude, that Marigold, you know, dream fighting wrestling week, too. Man. She's got a lot of opportunities, I bet, knocking on her going to now. A 69-year-old man was using a public toilet in Gunma, prefecture and had finished his business was about to leave the small building when a black bear poked its head through the door and made eye contact with him that's always so awkward in the bathroom that happens you look through the crack i'm in here i'm in here

it's the worst oh yeah when you can see someone through the crack and you oh and you make eye contact yeah that's the worst mortifying yeah they alpha you when they do that that's the thing Just the thing, Jeff, that you got to think about. I think that's an alpha move? Yeah. Just to look at you and you're sitting there on the toilet, totally vulnerable and they alpha you? I just think it's whoever breaks eye contact first is the... Ooh, that's a good point.

Like, if you maintain eye contact, you're like, I'm, you're territorial there. Yeah, you like drop one while you're looking at them. That's true. You're not getting alphaed. No. That's a good point. Or start peeing. Yeah, I wish I knew all this.

All right. So this guy's using the toilet. A black bear makes eye contact with them in the door, and both bear and human are totally surprised. This man yells and falls backward, but the bear rushes in and claws him as he pinwheels his legs and did his best to scare the bear off. Is he on one of those, like, standing toilets then? I think he was done in the toilet at that point. I think he had been like washing his hands and about to leave the building. Oh, okay.

Luckily, this works. The bear fled the scene and this man was treated for minor injuries. These kind of stories were commonplace this year in Japan with these 230 attacks reported. There have been so many that a local university created a heat map. Do you guys know what a heat map is? Yeah. Yeah. For those who don't know, it's kind of like a map where there's going to be like the more red colors show where there's

more activity, and then it'll fade into like different lighter colors. But this heat map shows where bear incidents have been reported and where bears have been cited so that people in Japan can avoid negative encounters themselves. And it hasn't just been locals that have been mauled. New Zealander Billy Halloran has been living in Japan for years. In October 4th, he was on a trail run in Miyoko, Japan when he stumbled on two Asiatic Black Bears, a female with a dependent cub. They were staring out of from inside of a bush. Rather than run, Billy started yelling at the large adult bear as it left the bushes and started moving toward him. He was backing away as the bear lunged forward and caught his right forearm in its mouth and it bit down hard and he immediately heard the sound

and felt the sensation of his bones and his arms snapping. Oh man. He fell to the ground and the bear started mauling his leg, tearing away at the flesh and biting so deep that it removed a chunk of bone from his hip. It then backed off. He managed to get up. He had a brief standoff with the bear before it left and returned to its cub. And he started actually running

in the opposite direction, which is pretty amazing if you can run after a bear, you know, pulled some bone off your hip. Yeah, that's amazing. He called his wife. She called emergency services. He was taken to the hospital

where he spent weeks recovering and needed multiple surgeries to repair his wounds. All right, we could go on and on with stories from this year. But I wanted to talk a little bit about why this might be happening and the Japanese response to this uptick and attacks. So first, let's go into why. And I'm mostly just going to be giving my opinion after reading all this stuff.

And I have, you know, read some stuff from different colleagues in the bear world that are a little bit closer to this than I am. Now, us listeners, can we take this as fact? You cannot take this as some of it you can take as fact. But if I say it's my opinion, it'll be my opinion. Right. Right. Great. First and foremost, something you can take as fact is this was a really bad year for some of the bears' natural food sources, especially beech nuts.

Remember, that's the tree that they really rely on the most in a lot of parts of Japan. And from what I read, the beech nut crop this year was almost non-existent, and when those normally dependable food sources fail, these bears have to start taking bigger risks to get atypical food resources that leads a lot of the bears that would typically be content just foraging in the woods, going into communities, raiding orchards, garbages, whatever, which puts them into direct contact with humans and leads to more attacks. And Mike brought up a good point earlier that this is awfully the- Indiscality cloaks, hiding the nuts. Exactly.

That was the point I was going to bring up that you brought up. No. What Mike had mentioned earlier is a lot of times this is going to be the less dominant bears that aren't able to take advantage of natural food sources. They're going to be pushed out and have to be. become like, you know, a little, they're going to have to take some big risks to get at food. Oh, man. So the humans are getting attacked by like the beta bears?

Not always, but sometimes, yeah. Which sucks. Yeah, that's really. Jeez. I guess that kind of makes sense, though. Like, you and Cyrus would always beat me up growing up. And then whenever like my. Come on.

And then whenever, whenever my, okay, you guys would always. I defended me growing up. I defended you from Cyrus a lot. So then whenever like my younger cousins or something would come over, I would just like beat the hell out of them. Yeah. And just part of like growing up with brothers and cousins. I wasn't.

Yeah. I was just making a point about the bears. Yeah. I didn't mean to make it on the defensive here. You're right. You're right. You're right. I was protesting so much.

also our cousins were easy fodder for you they never beat me up i made that are the beech nut trees what the bears are climbing and sleeping in or is does it really correlate to what their food sources the trees they decide to it does not necessarily what they're not like necessarily living in these trees they will sometimes sleep in them and whatnot but um a lot of the trees they climb are going to be for food, and then sometimes they climb them as escape terrain. So if they're just trying to get away from something, they can climb up a tree. And that's, that's the curious thing to me about this is that our American black bears use trees to get away, and that's why we kind of assume they're not very aggressive, is because they kind of always have

a place they can hide. And so it doesn't really make sense to me that this bear is so aggressive, because they also are great climbers and could just use trees to hide. So we'll talk about that a little bit more. But. Kayak gets my flight, hotel, and rental car right. So I can tune out travel advice that's just plain wrong. Bro, Skycoin, way better than points. Never fly during a Scorpio full moon. Just tell the manager you'll sue. Instant room upgrade. Stop taking bad travel advice. Start comparing hundreds of sites with kayak and get your trip right. Kayak. Got that right.

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I see site for details. I did read a paper that was titled Mechanisms of Human Black Bear Conflicts in Japan in preparation for climate change. This paper was published in 2020 and it highlights how climate change might be leading to detrimental effects that would cause bears to seek out human food. And one thing I really liked about this paper is I think when we tend to talk about climate change as a society, we only talk about like warming effects, how summers are getting longer and winters are getting shorter.

And this paper brings up that climate change is very dynamic. And while the overall trend is warming, it's also introducing a lot of unprecedented variability to places like Japan. So these authors looked at both longer, colder winters and hotter, drier summers to see what kind of effect they would have on human-bear conflict. And they show that climate change is likely to have a really strong effect on the number of conflicts. And that's what we're seeing this year and the past few years in Japan because a lot of

these natural food sources are failing because it's just been so hot and dry there in the summer. Oh. Yeah. Sure. You don't mind. Like, it's like the whole lay mis thing, right? Like if you're starving, you steal the bread.

Right. Yeah. These bears are starving. The end of the day, you get nothing but nothing. They're going to go into trash and grocery stores and stuff. Yeah, and you're going to learn we've done all sorts of f*** up shit to these bears, so I don't blame them at all. I don't blame them. Yeah, you do. You're always like we should kill those bears when they go into shop.

I don't blame them because I don't think we should. That's true. Don't have anything. I got them tangled up there. Not all bears, but when there's a lot of them. Yeah, Mike. Climate chain, is that leading to a source? surplus or a deficit of naturally occurring food sources for these bears.

And it's like I just, I don't really know how to ask what I'm asking or trying to ask right now. But like, it kind of seems to me with the weather changing in the way that it is, it would actually lead to more natural resources for these bears. But I'm such a, so far from an expert on any of this that you think that. But it, the thing about climate change and kind of what happens with a lot of these systems is that the changes are so quickly that the stuff that's able to really quickly take advantage of the changing ecosystem, the changing soil conditions, moisture levels, and whatnot are often invasive plants and they're often weeds that aren't really edible

that nothing's really going to exploit. And so these other plants like beech nuts, they really require this kind of Goldie locks zone of moisture, of temperature, of whatever, to be. really do well. And the stuff that is really kind of flexible and plastic is often stuff that no one really eats. That's kind of the real big downside to it. So these guys pretty much show that climate change has a huge effect on conflict, but there are some additional reasons that people think these conflicts are happening. And one of them is changing population dynamics among people in Japan. Because what's really happening is if Japan is having, they have a decreasing

population right now. And a lot of the younger people are leaving these rural communities. They're moving to city centers. And that leaves a lot of these rural communities that are on the edge of bear habitat really underpopulated. And bears are feeling much more confident entering the communities, entering orchards that have been left kind of to go wild and agriculture that's been left. And they're raiding these places because there's really not people around anymore. Yeah. So it's making them more comfortable in our civilizations. It's kind of like what we might see in an apocalypse where wildlife kind of takes over these spaces that we used to have. That makes sense to me why maybe there's not quite so many hunters anymore because it's usually in those rural centers where, all right, should I just like to know. No, that was great. That makes sense to me though, right? Because with fewer people there to make up for the communities that typically become hunters. Yep.

That's a huge part of it too is that there used to be like 500,000 something hunting permits that were issued every year. And that number has been halved in recent years. There's just really not that much interest in hunting anymore. But they're still killing hell of theirs in Japan. Yeah. Sure. Because like the Japanese countryside seems like it's like awesome and just beautiful and peaceful. Hot springs everywhere.

Sushi conveyor belts everywhere. Lining those. And then like, you know, in United States right now, just for a long time, people have been going from cities to more rural places. Yeah. They see three episodes of Yellowstone and they move to a ranch in Montana from L.A., you know? So it's just kind of interesting that in Japan, everyone's kind of conjugating to the cities. Yeah. I think part of that is their cities are much more livable and beautiful.

and walkable and just appealing than our cities are, you know? Maybe they're afraid of bears, dude. Yeah, but they're, I mean, they've had bears in Tokyo this year. Like, bears are almost everywhere. Oh, man. And a big part of that, Jeff, you kind of just hinted on something else I wanted to talk about. That's why it's so many Japanese people are moving to Hawaii, I bet. Now that they got bears in Tokyo.

Yeah. Tiger sharks, though, in Hawaii. Another thing that you just reminded me of, though, that's really interesting. interesting about Japan is over 60% of Japan is forested. They've done a really good job of preserving their natural forests, and it's part of what makes the country so beautiful and so loved by the international community, and people there are really used to kind of living around the forest and being near the forest, and it just so happens to have a lot of bears in it as well. Yeah, that's a really interesting thought experiment to me right now, that obviously I think

the ethical course of action is to preserve those spaces where wildlife can thrive. But that is in turn also maybe increasing the chance that that wildlife and the humans living by it get into conflict with each other. Exactly. That's really, yeah. I've just never really thought about it in that way. But that, to me, that's like, maybe it's a good thing that Bolsonaro's chopping down the entire rainforests.

It's not. Keeping the people safe. Bolsonaro's in jail, too. Oh, that's right. Let's see if parratax increase in jail. Yeah. The thing is, so, yeah, that's a great point. I do think, though, like.

Until the end. When we, yeah. When we decide that we want to live next to the forest, you know, I live in a rural area. I have foxes in my yard almost every day. We have chickens. For me, like, I would think it would be gross if I decided to shoot that fox. which I'm fully within my rights to do because it's eating my chickens because I'm the one that decided I want to live in a rural area I'm the one that's putting out these attractants for these animals

So I have to properly protect you know my attractants so that they can't be killed But I would never in a million years shoot one of those foxes because it's my fault that they're you know being drawn to my property So that's kind of I think that's the responsibility people have to take But I wanted to ask you guys a question when you picture Japanese forests, how do you picture them? Like, tell me about what kind of images that conjures for you. I'm talking about the actual quality of the forest, like the density, the light penetration, like, what would you say?

Cherry blossoms. Cherry blossoms. Samurai swords clashing in the moonlight. Maybe, like, if you were an aunt at, like, a bonsai tree shop. Sure. Yeah. Okay. Um.

Yeah. Let's go with that. All right. Yeah, maybe I'm not. So when I've always pictured them, I picture them as being very dense, almost kind of like the Pacific Northwest with lots of foliage, really dense cedar forests. And what I learned is that that is the more modern Japanese forests. But traditionally, they were this really sparse, open, airy kind of forest. And that's what these bears evolved in.

But then they brought cedar to Japan, and cedar has really taken over a lot of their forests. and it's become much more dense. And because of that, these bears have actually become much more confident moving closer to cities because the cover is so much better for them than it used to be. That's really interesting. Yeah. Wow. All right.

We have to talk about this for one second. There is an argument that the bear population is just simply too high in the country and that hunting used to keep numbers in check, but the growing unpopularity of hunting and bear hunting in Japan has given this bear population the ability to hit new highs. Who's like driving that argument? A lot of people. And a lot of, pretty much every article I read says that, you know, it's because they're

underhunted is one of the reasons. I agree that hunting can keep bear populations or wildlife populations at a pre-decided level or number. What I don't necessarily agree with, especially with bear hunting, is that if you don't hunt them, they'll become overpopulated. because there are natural controls that will stop bears from becoming too successful or overpopulating. And in my opinion, hunting isn't necessary to regulate the numbers of predators and ecosystems. Okay. I was just going to ask that very thing.

So hunting is, at least for predators, you're saying, because I always hear about the argument for deer control, population control in the United States. I always hear hunters being cited as a necessary part of that effort. With deer, I would almost agree because we have created perfect habitat for deer and we've removed all their natural predators. So we kind of are necessary to keeping their numbers in check because they have unlimited habitat. But for a lot of animals, animals like bears, if people can stop them from getting at human food sources, then their success is going to be determined by natural food sources. And they're going to get to a level where there just simply can't be more bears in that ecosystem. and it's going to naturally regulate. That's what's happening in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem right now.

We think we kind of hit our level of how many grizzly bears that ecosystem can hold. Oh, wow. And we don't need to hunt them to regulate those numbers. And that would happen. The argument would be just like, Japan seems to have a lot of bears. And maybe that number hasn't been met like it has at Yellowstone. And they're having like bear problems already.

ready at this number? My argument to that, though, would be the reason that all those bears, they have so many bears, is because they're getting into a lot of human food and that we're creating endless opportunities for those bears to reproduce and be successful. And if we made it so they weren't able to do that, then they would be naturally regulated. So would you say the primary deficiency in Japanese bear control at the moment is education? Yes, that's exactly. Man, you guys are just on it today. The next thing I was going to say is that I think there's a bit of a lack of proper education for people that are on the front lines of this problem. The main thing that I think really needs to change is that people need to be educated on how to properly store and protect their attractants so that bears don't have access to them.

And that forces bears to rely on natural food sources instead. Also, bear spray is only really just now starting to become really well marketed and accessible in Japan, but it's still somewhat hard to get. And there needs to be a lot of training when it comes to how to use it and proper conflict prevention and what to do when you encounter a bear. I mean, it takes like five minutes to learn how to use it. Yeah. It does. You're right. Yeah.

It doesn't take a lot of time. But there's still a lot of people that don't even understand what it is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. All right. And then I think the final thing that's the kind of... They should just like critical think a little bit when they hear the name bear spray. Yeah, sure. For what it is. Yeah. But I mean, even in the U.S., there's people that think it's like repellent spray.

You're supposed to spray yourself. Like mosquito spray. Yeah. Bugs. I think the final thing that's causing these attacks before we get on to what they're doing to stop them is the attitude of this species. And I've seen different hypotheses for this. on why Asiatic Black Bears are so defensive, but really regardless of the reason, this is a bear that is often willing to pick fight over flight,

and people that live near them or recreate around them need to be aware of that, and you just need to have deterrence if you're going to be recreating in Japan in bear country. From what I've read, I would mentally treat this like a grizzly bear. That is the kind of aggression and defensive nature that we're talking about. they're highly defensive animals. So I wouldn't, if I'm going to go out in like prime black bear habitat in Japan, I would want bear spray after reading what I've read. They're not as big so that like the potential for damage isn't quite as bad,

but there's still, I mean, there's still an animal that can kill you. Sure, yeah. Okay. I know this has been a dense episode, but our last thing we're really going to talk about is Japan's response to all of those attacks. and this is where things get a little wonky sometimes. Yeah, we've talked a little bit about it in the news episode. Yeah.

Do you guys remember what they used in that one? There's a guy in a bearsuit in one. There was just a whole SWAT team and the guy in a bear suit. They used a guy in a bear suit to train. Seriously. There been robot wolves. Robot wolves. Those are still being used.

There's actually a whole company that sells robot. for people to use in their fields. I wonder if I could buy one. I want to buy one so bad. Drones have become really popular in some areas that play the sound of barking dogs and fireworks to scare away bears, which is actually like a pretty effective way. Yeah. Like bears could take a wolf.

I'm just thinking they should do like a robot Godzilla if they really aren't a scary. They're serious. Yeah. Yeah. I don't even think it's necessarily that it's a wolf shape. It's just like a scary thing that's making a lot of noise. Yeah. And then they actually, the thing that's really kind of caught the most national and international attention is that they are calling in the military to help with this bear problem.

And what's a little misleading about those headlines is that the military is actually not authorized to shoot any bears, but they're assisting hunters that are legally permitted to kill bears. And they're also just kind of doing on the ground management for this bear issue. riot police in Japan do have permission to kill problem bears but like we talked about they're often often not that well trained in dealing with bears but really what the news is reporting is that there's this all-out war on bears in Japan and that's not what's going on there are coals happening they do these coals almost every year like it's not like Australia with the emus where they had a real war an actual war with like a mounted machine gun yeah uh they do coals And when I say that, it's mostly just authorizing hunters to kill a certain number of bears.

And I was surprised by how many that number is. I mean, we're talking thousands of bears that are killed by hunters every year in Japan. Yeah. But really, these hunters are saying that they're just not enough to keep up with the growing population. And that's probably true. Okay. We're almost there. In my opinion, what I think would be the most effective way would be removing the problem bears.

This is what they've done in places like Yellowstone. And what that does is it cuts that kind of problem genetics out of the population. And the bears that are teaching their cubs to raid crops, to go into homes, to do whatever, are being removed. And the ones that are really wild, risk-averse bears are staying. And they're the ones that are doing the breeding. And over time, you kind of work those genetics out of the population. Yeah, it seems like they need to be better at getting the culpable, bear like right away because if you wait a couple days then it's like yeah you killed a bear but

there's a lot of bears in this forest you know right and where jeff doesn't jeff would argue you should never do it i do think uh in this case where you're having this level of conflict you do need to remove these conflict bears or else everyone's going to hate every bear in japan and that's not what we want. I'm in the middle of you too. I think there should be due process. They should be put on trial, have representation. They kind of are often. They test their genetics to make sure they got the right bear. Yeah. That polar bear prison in Churchill? Something like that. For me and the reason, I think people might bristle a little when they hear that I say that bears should sometimes be killed. but the thing that you don't want, and this is what I just mentioned, is the bears that are causing problems can create a negative perception of the entire species if you allow that to continue happening.

And that becomes a really dire situation for the species as a whole. And that is what I don't want to have happen. Okay. While there is a lot of fear in Japan, especially on the north end of Honshu, many people on the island still have a great respect for Asiatic Black Bears. In some of these prefectures, they're considered a mountain spirit, and they have an importance in both Shinto and Buddhist traditions. They also feature heavily in Japanese kawai culture or cute culture, which actually has been kind of problematic because a lot of people just think they're like cute, cuddly animals when they're not. But really, the resolution of all of this is to be determined. I think better education, better deterrence is going to go a long way in reducing conflicts.

And over time, I think people and bears are just going to have to figure out a way to navigate climate change together in a more harmonious way. I think the catch-22 about bear species, especially our black bear species, is they are one of the few animals that are able to switch between food sources so rapidly, which is so great about them. It's like such an amazing thing that they're able to deal with all this shit that we're throwing at them. But the bad part of that is it puts them into conflict with people. And I think we need to have a lot of patience with these animals because we're making them deal with stuff that they've never had to deal with throughout their entire evolutionary history. All right. Do you guys have any questions about the ongoing conflict in Japan before we move on to our categories? I just have a dumb joke.

Yeah, let's hear it. That one sumo wrestler lady who the bear ran into twice? Yeah, she wasn't a sumo wrestler. But yeah It's kind of like a kamikaze bear Ooh Good job When in Rome do as the Romans do

All right Good job Good job Thank you Okay Let's move on to our categories Okay This is kind of a big question

But what's your favorite pop culture To ever come out of Japan What I want is one movie One video game and one anime from each of you. It's almost more interesting for me to do my second because the number one things

are so obvious for me. It's like Godzilla, One Piece, and Final Fantasy 7. It's like those are my number one things. That's my answer then. We'll go with that then. We'll give you honorable mentions if you want after.

Yeah. I would go Battle Royale, the movie, one piece for just like anime. And then game, I'd probably go ghost to Susima. Is that from Japan or just about Japan?

It's by Sucker Punch, which is not a French studio. It's not Japanese, though. Okay, I'll go smash bros. There you go. Oh, that's a good pick. That should have been my game pick. Whoops. All right, I picked Godzilla minus one for my movie.

I picked Super Mario Brothers on Nintendo 8bit for my game. And I picked Princess Mononoku. for my anime, which I know is a movie and it's kind of in a weird. But that's what I picked. Mike, what are your honorable mentions? No, I was surprised. Neither if you pick Resident Evil 4. That's going to be really high on my honorable.

I didn't know that was Japanese. Yeah, very. That's probably my favorite game ever. Yeah. So really anything by Kurosawa or Kobayashi as far as movies go, Harakiri, human condition, seven samurai, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. amazing movies and then man the anime one's just so hard but like redline if we want to go movies

spirited away is my favorite studio jibli movie it's incredible um do you think you like seven samurai so much because it's just pouring rain the whole movie you just love rain it's pouring rain in like one part of the movie that's a long movie for it to be all rain all the time all right um no i also wanted to ask you guys if you could think of any uh favorite pop culture Asiatic Black Bears. So speaking of anime, Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear, I think is an Asiatic Black Bear.

Probably, I don't, I'm not probably just about any Japanese bear you see is going to be. Yeah, I was wondering if the Olympics used one, but I don't know. They did. Yeah. Okay. Pick that one. Sure.

Manakuma from the Dong and Rompah series. More technically a robot with a bomb inside of it, but bear from Japan, so maybe It was kind of frustrating when I was reading all these articles. They almost all use brown bear photos. And I think brown bears are taking a lot of the heat.

And we are going to talk about Japanese brown bears when we do the Senkibetsu Brown Bear incident in the early 1900s, which is a big story. But when I went to Taiwan, they have what's called the Formosin black bear, which is a subspecies of Asiatic Black Bear. and they used it for everything. It's like their national mascot, and I just loved all the cute, like, black bear stuff everywhere. So that would be my pick is just, like, all the ads in Taiwan,

with foremost in black bears. Jeff, do you have one? I did the Olympics bear. Oh, yeah, yeah, that's right. Okay. All right, let's do a quick cage match. I think what I want to do is stack this up against the other bears that we've talked about. They're like, when they interviewed.

I've introduced mascots to their prisons. I feel like the first mascot they introduced was an Asiatic Black Bear. And it's just like the guy in a big bear costume. And it's really funny because he's just in prison and they have like a full mascot in their prison. So good. They're one of the top like kawai animals for sure. Kawai. Kawai, yeah.

Okay. Cage match. Stacking this up against our other bears, I actually think it beats our American Black Bear and a lot of fights if we're doing the average weight of each. If we're doing the max size of each, then the American Black Bear wins that fight. But if it's average size,

I'm probably going to put this bear over American Black Bear and probably over Sloth Bear, too. Just the aggressive, like, fight or flight. Just hyperaggressive, yeah, yeah. So I don't it doesn't be brown bears and it doesn't be polar bears Although there are stories in Russia of this bear like scaring brown bears off of kills So I think they can be really intimidating but they wouldn't beat them in like a cage match fight But they're gonna be a wolf that's interesting

Yeah might be our third best bear in that cage match Yeah I think so probably beats a leopard wouldn't beat a tiger tigers do eat them throughout their range Yeah And that's one of the reasons people think they might be aggressive. But that's what I wrote the paper on about sloth bears too. What do you think a tiger's favorite thing to eat is? Like a deer. Those big deer that we saw in India.

Or water buffalo. Why am I? Oh, Sambar deer. S-M-B-A-R. Yeah, that's kind of, I think that's their favorite food. Yeah. Also, those huge buffalo, the water buffalo, the guar. Yeah, Guar

They eat those things? Yeah, he'll kill war Those things are massive Yeah Guar Those things too So good Yeah

Like bison horns Like they look sharp But the very ends Look kind of dull You know Yeah They always look like a little beat up And not like sharp

But on Guar's Their horns always look just sharp Like Yes Super pointed Yeah Yeah Yeah

All right I want to do a quick What would Mike and Jeff do you guys are you're just finishing up in the toilet in Japan beautiful part of the country yeah and a bear pokes its head through the door what are you doing I'm not gonna flush it seems like there might be something in there that might be a little more interesting than me to them just because the smell's gonna be stronger and then yeah while they're going to town on that I'm gonna slip out through that crack okay I like that yeah what crack that the one he's

When I put my invisibility cloak on, won't even see me slip right through that crack with it. You don't want to be in the stall with the bear. So I'll just sit there. I'll probably start wiping. I think I don't want to try to run away with a messy butt still. You don't want to be mauled with the dirty butt. It won't be the greatest cleanup job I've ever done. Yeah.

But I will at least give one. one go at wiping. Okay. Yeah. And I'll be slow, you know, no sudden movements. Yeah. And then if it gets in that stall, I'm just going to dive under the stall. So then...

Oh, that's smart. And then, like, if it comes after me, I'll dive back into the stall and just kind of go back. Just kind of go back and forth. Yeah. Until one of us gives up. Maybe you'll break its ankles, you know? Jukum. And that way, if I haven't finished going to a bathroom, I could make.

Maybe keep going, like, little by little when I'm getting back in there. That's a good point. You don't want to be uncomfortable. Because it didn't seem like there's any other bathrooms close by there. Like, that's the bathroom. Yeah. Maybe throw your wad of toilet paper over the wall somewhere else to distract it. Ooh, I like that.

That might work, right? Then you can wipe. All right? You have more than one wad of toilet paper. Oh, I thought you meant the roll. Not the whole. They don't use toilet paper, though. You use the toilet paper and then you throw.

I'd have to wait for the bidet. Maybe it's one of those fancy bidets that talks, though, and you could tell it to say, like, go away bear or something. Maybe it's, like, super fancy and it has, like, a bear spray function. Yeah, exactly. Squared it right in the eyes. What if you accidentally hit that function while you're pooping? All right.

Yeah, so that's my answer is I would bidet bear spray it. Okay, perfect. I'm glad we got to that. What you're actually supposed to do is actually really similar to what you would do in a brown bear encounter or a grizzly bear encounter, which is group up,

get your deterrent out if you have it, slowly back away from that bear. If it does make contact with you, what I've read is to go into fetal position and cover your neck, cover your vitals, and hope the bear is just defensively attacking you, which from everything I read is almost all, of these attacks are defensive. They're not really feeding on their victims. So there's a good

chance it's just going to swat you a couple times, bite you, and get out of there. Kind of like it did with the New Zealander. He didn't stop that attack. The bear just decided it was done. That is what I've read you're supposed to do. I'm going to look into this a little bit more and talk to some of my expert colleagues to see if that's still the messaging they're telling people. But what I would say, again is if you're going to be in a part of Japan where you might run into this species, it's a really good idea to find some bear spray

and to keep it with you. It's not hard to carry. It's easy to use. It's not that expensive. So I would do it. Do you think if a bear was mad at you and was like fix into attack, if you threw an invisibility cloak on, would it be able to like smell and hear you well enough

to still get you? Can't they like that the invisibility cloak doesn't, Oh, if you put it on yourself? Yeah. I thought you were saying if you threw it on the bear. I was like, I wouldn't do anything. That'd be extra bad then. Yeah, I think it'd still be able to get you probably.

It'd be confused, though. Yeah. All right, well, so that's not an effective countermeasure? No, I don't think so. I think it'd help. Yeah. Like, if you have one, give it a try. Sure.

Yeah, you might as well put it on if you've got it. Yeah. All right. What about, like, the Frodo and Sam rock blanket? I wouldn't. do that either, but it's, I guess it's worth a shot. Better than nothing. Yeah. I mean, I confused a

human, I'm sure it'd confuse a bear. Is that something the Hobbit's like learned how to do? Because it was perfect. I think it was like an elven blanket or something, right? Yeah. Maybe elves just have magic. What about the, what about the Pita

Malark paint your face like a rock? You know? That's like that work. I think that's right. I think it's really some of the scent, too. Sure. He's covered. He was caked up in that mud.

Yeah, it was. All right, my next category, we are heading to Japan in about a month and a half. We're doing our tooth and claw trip with our Komodo guests. And then on our way back, we decided to stop in Japan for a little bit because Mike loves the country so much. He wanted to show us a few things. I've only been there for a day. What do you guys most excited for during our time in Japan? I can go first.

Oh, go ahead. No, you go ahead. For me, it's the sumo championships that we're going to go to. That's honestly the main reason that I'm taking the diversion is I really am excited to see that atmosphere and culture and just really kind of feel it. So that's what it is. I mean, yeah, it's the overall trip, really is because, like, Mike wanted to go to Japan for a long time, and so did Brent. and then when they win it seemed like is better than they even thought it would be.

So I'm just excited to be there. The food probably. And then we decided to go to Disneyland, Tokyo. That might be. Yeah, I'm stoked for that. Oh, yeah. I forgot we were doing that. I'm excited.

Yeah. Mine specifically, just because I've been to a sumo tournament before, but as part of our tour package, we're getting, I think we're going to be able to eat some of their traditional, like, chonko sumo stew before the matches. And I just don't, I don't even know it. I'm like, I don't even want to look up what that is.

So I'm just surprised when we get there, but I'm so excited to just have a big old bowl full of, knowing my, because whatever, they're putting on. It's so much weight they're packing on. So, like, what do they have in that stew, you know? Just pure fat. Yeah.

It's like, yeah, carbs and fat and, oh, it's going to be amazing. Bear. Yeah, bear meat. All right. This is a very quick category, but it's called Best Comment You Found During Your Research. While I was researching one of these attacks on Reddit, this is one of the comments. Getting mauled is actually really frowned upon in Japan. It goes against the traditional concept of Ikiru, which means to live.

It's so dark. That's... Oh, I looked it up and the actual translation is like, will to live. Yeah. Anyway. Okay. Very disrespectful, but very funny comment. Who, a couple questions real quick.

A couple listener questions. This one's from Madison. Here's a question. Would you rather, A, be able to speak every language fluently, or B, have all of your Sim needs, bladder, energy, fun, hunger, hygiene, and social filled 100% at all times. So essentially, like, would you rather know every single language or would you just feel totally satisfied at all times? No, I do the language one. Yeah.

The satisfied one doesn't make sense. Like, I don't play the Sims, but I think it's just, yeah. If you don't ever feel sad, then you don't appreciate happiness. Right. But it wasn't happiness wasn't one of them. It was bladder, energy, fun, hunger, hygiene, and social. If you feel fun all the time, then you never feel sad. I don't want to have fun all the time.

Yeah. Good point. Okay. I think we're all language then. Yeah. Hmm. Okay. This one's from Andy.

This is kind of a sadder question, but I wanted to read it. Sad listener question here for Wes, but actually mostly Jesse. I lost my soul dog a month ago tomorrow. Does it get better? Does it just get easier to live with the? grief. My husband and I are both veterinarians. We help families through this on an almost daily basis, but nothing prepares you for this type of loss, of course. What helped you both through losing your sweet price? I'm not going to ask Jesse this because I don't really want to make her

think about it if she doesn't want to. She's still really struggling. I think I'm doing a lot better even though it hits me still sometimes. It's been about a year and a half. The thing that helped us the most was getting another dog. And for me, the thing I just tell myself when I miss Bryce is that had Bryce not left us when she did, we wouldn't have rescued Polly. And Polly was in desperate need of a good home. And she's a really tricky dog, but a wonderful, just we love her so much. But I think had she gone to a home that didn't have a Jesse in it, someone that was just willing to devote so much time and love toward a dog, she would have had a really hard time. And so the fact that we could get a new dog not only helped us, but it makes me feel like Bryce left at the right time.

So that's how, that's how I can. Can I ask you a controversial question? Maybe, but we might cut it. Sure. How do you feel about Tom Brady cloning his favorite dog? And now he just has his favorite dog again in a new dog. I don't like the dog cloning stuff. Yeah.

You're not going to have this, the dog's not going to have the same personality. It's going to look the same, but it's not going to have the same personality. And for me, and we've talked about this a lot, I am a huge proponent of rescuing dogs. There are so many good dogs that need homes and they're stuck in shelters and all they want is to be loved and have a family. And when you buy a dog from a breeder or clone a dog, you're denying one of those dogs a home that just needs one so badly. So I just am all for rescues, and that's it. All right, this one's from Dana. If you could all talk to one species of animal, which would it be?

And what would be the first question you'd ask? My girlfriend said whales, but we agreed it might be a sad convo. Sad combo. What animal's going to be like a great conversation? Yeah, like a mosquito. It's going to be like, yum, thank you. Yeah, maybe a mosquito. Then it wouldn't make that annoying buzz sound.

You could be like, stop. Or maybe that one turtle is like the last male of his species and was just having sex all the time. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Although, I don't know. Maybe that'd be sad too. In fact, for sure it would be.

I'd just want to talk to dogs and be like, what do you want? Like, what makes you happiest, you know? So that's the animal I deal with the most. Okay. I wouldn't want any animal I, like, run into frequently. I want it to be like one that I hardly ever see and then it's like hey what's up maybe like a mountain line

you can be like why don't you have sex yeah just be like oh what's up dude it would be like what's up and then that would be it you wasted it burned Mike dude if you ask a pig what's up and they'd be like I don't know I can't see

I can't look up that's what I would choose just to play that prank. Maybe it'd be kind of nice to have just an information network of pigeons in your town. Oh, yeah. Maybe useful just to have a fleet of, you know, I can't imagine what I'd be interested in enough to talk to them about happening around town, but that's a cool idea. That one's heavy, though, because, like, they work for the government, so then you'd learn

all these dark government secrets. Yeah. And you'd just, like, no one would believe you. You'd have to keep it to yourself. but it'd be like way too big about that thing. Yeah. I wouldn't mind carrying the burden of knowledge. Into our next question.

He would be like, these pigeons are nut jobs, dude. These pigeons are crazy. They think that all this just was planned. All right, this one's from Vanessa. Vanessa says, would you rather have the ability to know the truth to one conspiracy theory or be able to make, everyone believe one conspiracy theory you make up. So would you rather know the truth to one conspiracy theory or be able to believe everyone

or make everyone believe a conspiracy theory you make up? Know the truth. You just kind of what I just said. You kind of just need to sit with that information. Yeah. Although it's not. There's people out there that believe them. I mean, yeah.

I think that's way better than just spreading misinformation. I don't want to lie about one. Yeah. But what if you could, I mean, your conspiracy theory could be something that is for good, you know, if you made everyone believe it. Like how you guys all made up climate change so that we'd stop burning fossil fuels. That you don't believe that. Jeff doesn't believe that. It's a big disclaimer.

I think I would do that. I think I would rather have someone believe my conspiracy theory because I would think of something that would be for the greater good. But knowing the truth to one, you just. it like would be frustrating, I think. Yeah. Maybe I'd want to know who killed John Bonae Ramsey. Oh my gosh. That's actually no care at all.

Incredible here, one bit. In an answer. Yeah. Yeah, I'm going to do know the truth to one. The thing is, too, that... Do you have one in mind? I mean, just any of the big ones, really. I think the moon, the moon landings, the one I...

and most curious about just because I think there's really compelling stuff on both sides. Yeah. Like, I would like to know if the moon landing, like, happened. Just like for 100%... Dude, Buzz Aldrin's going to punch you in the face if you're not. She's the one that said the video was fake. All right. I'm Conan.

That's a big show to say that on. Right. I mean, like, I'm 99.999 repeating, certain that the moon landing happened. It would be nice just to have confirmation, and it wouldn't be such like a big revelation in my brain that it would alter the course of my life. So maybe something like that is the right answer, because I don't want to get into, because with all the other conspiracies, it seems like there's a lot of moving parts and a lot of gray area, a lot of half-truths you're going to have to, like, still navigate through. and I just wouldn't care to get too wrapped up in any of that. I'm just trying to live my happy little ignorant life.

Yeah, I'm trying to change everyone's mind so I'm picking the second one. I'd want to know if Ratatouille was actually able to control that guy's movements just by pulling his hair. Is there a conspiracy about that? I just, I mean, that's not how hair works with. Sure.

Okay. There's not nerves from your hair into your arms and legs. Maybe there are in France. All right, one more. This one's from Katie. I wanted to talk about this. So do you guys watch Stranger Things? If so, what are your thoughts in the first few episodes in the new season?

Have either of you watched those first few episodes? No. Yeah, I watched it. I have. I think it's really bad. I think the last scene of the available episodes was really fun. The rest of it has been. been very

unenjoyable to me. The last thing was great. The writing's gotten a little lazy. There's a lot of plot armor with the demigorgans or whatever. Yeah.

Where it's like literally a lady with an axe fending one off and then an entire army not being able to kill a single one. Yeah. And it's just kind of like how powerful aren't these things. I love that army.

seen too because they're all in a circle shooting at it and they're not having like bullets whizzing by them and stuff there's an entire circle around it and they're all firing machine guns at it they're all yeah kind of enjoy it being like bad enough that social media clips about it have been really funny yeah so that's been fun to see the downside to having a show like this where you have great child actors that then turn into adults is you don't know how good of actors they're going to be once they're like their own people and unfortunately i think like more than half of these kids did not turn into great actors and and a couple of them are really bad and they're like really leaning on them this season and so i just haven't liked it at all yeah all right uh

we're going to have to do kind of a dark conservation corner for this animal and i'm just if you're really extra sensitive to animal abuse especially i would skip this one but i do think it's important you listen to it to know what's going on. All right. So Asiatic Black Bears are listed at IUCN vulnerable because they're found in so many different countries, a fair amount of those countries aren't really doing a lot of population estimates. We don't know how many there actually are.

Estimates in Japan range anywhere from 15,000 to 50,000. Most of the things I read said around 40,000. They're under a lot of different threats throughout their range. Their biggest threats are habitat loss. I thought you said just that one island had 40,000. That was what I read in most things, but they say it's anywhere between 15 and 50, depending on where you read. But most, I think like... Just on that one island, though, right?

But Honshu Island's really the only island in Japan, they're found. There's one other island that has some, but most of them are on Honshu Island. Yeah. Is that where Tokyo is? Yeah. It's the big main body of Japan, yeah. They're under a ton of threats. Their biggest ones are coming from climate change, habitat loss.

but another big threat with these animals is poaching and trafficking. And unfortunately, bear bile is a huge market in Chinese traditional medicine. And like even more unfortunate is that there actually is some medical proof that bear bile can be beneficial to humans. But there are synthetic versions of it that are just as beneficial. You don't have to get it from these animals. And bear bile farming is maybe the bleakest, most depressing, animal abuse issue in the world for me personally. It's made me cry thinking about it before, learning about it, but we are going to talk about it. Basically, what it involves is either

catching cubs or breeding cubs into captivity. They put them in cages that are just big enough for their bodies. They're so small that their bodies sometimes grow around these cages. They are hooked up to machines that painfully extract enough bile to keep the bear alive and producing bile, and the bear simply lives its entire life in a tiny cage while it suffers almost continuous pain. They're starved and dehydrated to stimulate bile production. Almost all of them are missing all of their teeth and their claws from desperately trying to get out of these cages.

I can't imagine a worse existence for a bear, or really any animal, for that matter. Luckily, there are groups that are completely dedicated to the eradication of this practice. They've made huge steps to end it in a lot of different places. One of the better known of those organizations is called Animals Asia, and we're going to link their donation page in the notes. It's a horrible, awful thing.

It's one of those things that I almost hesitate to even put in people's minds because it's so terrible, but I do think it's important. We know just what we've done to these animals, and don't ever buy anything with bear bile in it, ever. Okay. Yeah. Suck. Yeah.

People suck. I really hate talking about that one. It just bums me out on such a huge level. But we got to get rid of that traditional medicine thing. It just needs to go. Okay. Claw rating. One to ten claws.

Give me your claw rating for Asiatic Black Bears. Hmm. This is tough. Yeah. I forget when I did for Backpacker where I had. Mike, you go first. I'm going to go with a 7.5. Okay.

And that's... I would have thought that, like, the Asian bear that's in, like, Korea and Japan and stuff, you would like the most. I don't... So, I don't feel much different. I think I gave American black bears an eight last time. We did it. I feel pretty much the same. So I can be generous and give them an eight.

I think they're amazing. I think that's... I don't have to explain myself. They're cool animals. I really do think they're... Good to have them, you know, bile intact. Hmm, I'm going to, I think they might be my last place bear. Hmm.

Okay. Over like spectacled bears, Andean bears. I mean, they have Paddington. Okay. Yeah, sure. That's true. So it's tough. That's a hard thing to say because they're cool animals.

They deserve credit for being that cool. Yeah. But I do think I'm going to put them as my last ranked bear, which means I can only give them a seven is as high as I can go. And I'm going to put them at 333. Okay. There's only eight bear species, and I just don't know if I can give any of them less than a 10 claw. So I think I have to give them 10 claws. I think they're kind of a combo between a black, an American black bear and a grizzly bear.

Like they're aggressive or defensive like a grizzly bear. They climb trees like American black bears. I think they're super cute with their crescent moon and like their big years. That is cool. So yeah, they're 10 for me, 10 koi animal. Good job, bears. All right. That's it for the episode.

Thanks everyone for suggesting it. We definitely listen to you guys when it comes to this kind of stuff. And as always, it's the holidays. So if you're interested in a gift for that toothy in your life, our merch store is open right now. Plus, we have gifting Patreon. You can gift a Patreon membership to your friends or your family or your loved ones. Or your enemies. Yeah, might as well.

You save a little bit for the membership. Yeah, sure. Yeah, make your enemies different. Olive Leaf. So check that out if you're not a member. And happy holidays. Happy holidays. Love you guys.

Love you. We'll see it. See you next time. Bye.