Drones Scare the Bejesus Out of Bears

This is what makes them shit themselves in the woods.

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Bears are just like us. Lumbering along looking for honeypots and picnic baskets, as I have been led to believe by American public schools, and just wanting to AH HOLY SHIT THE SKY IS FULL OF SWOOPING MECHANIZED TERRORS! Or so they would probably think if you buzzed them with a drone.

Science News reports a group of researchers did just that in order to test black bear’s reactions to unidentified flying objects — or UFOs, as they’re more commonly called. The bears were definitely stressed. Their heart rates leapt and stress responses were noticeable. Even worse was when the quadcopter researchers used was able to mask its sound by flying in the wind. One bear’s heartrate quadrupled, and she ran into a neighbor female’s territory.

“Some of the spikes in the heart rate of the bears were far beyond what we expected,” Mark Ditmer of the University of Minnesota, St. Paul, told Phys. “We had one bear increase her heart rate by approximately 400 percent — from 41 beats per minute to 162 beats per minute. Keep in mind this was the strongest response we saw, but it was shocking nonetheless.”

There you have it. Bears are huge pussies. Science proves it.