Grizzly bear takes ‘selfie’ — inside its mouth — while playing with GoPro in Montana
A grizzly bear captured close-up selfies while playing with a GoPro in Montana, video shows.
YouTuber Tom Scott took his GoPro to the Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center just outside Yellowstone National Park, where products that survive one hour with a grizzly can become “certified as bear-resistant… by actual bears,” Scott said on a July 17 YouTube video.
The waterproof, shockproof GoPro was put inside a garbage can coated with peanut butter and honey and then chomped on by a grizzly before the bear dunked it into a pond.
During the ordeal, the bear managed to capture some selfies — including an extreme close-up of the inside of its mouth, video shows.
Scott says he assumed the GoPro was gone for good, lost in the grizzly’s murky pond in its enclosure at the center.
But then staff found it when they drained the pond for scheduled cleaning, he said. Not only was the memory card still intact — it had captured some compelling footage filmed by the bear itself, including the bear tearing through the trash can, the inside of its mouth and close-ups of its long claws.
“’Our cameras can survive 5 hours with bears while covered in honey’ is one hell of a statement,” someone commented on the video.
One of the last files on the memory card shows the bear somehow hit the shutter button itself. That’s when it filmed the inside of its mouth.
“And that is the selfie. It’s very close up, and it’s accidental, but that is a selfie,” Scott says before showing a slow-motion replay of “that one horrible shot of the mouth.”
Scott compared the time stamp on the video with the center’s schedule and concluded it was likely the same bear, about five hours later.
“That means it’s probably the same bear remembering the camera in the bottom of the pond, picking it out, playing with it for a while and somehow managing to push the shutter button, and then dropping it back in the pond,” he said.
The very last file on the camera, captured about four hours later, shows a close-up of another bear’s claws in the pond.
“And I’ve realized something. Those final shots, just the last two video files from in the pond, that footage was entirely created by bears accidentally,” he said. “I didn’t set up the camera. I didn’t start it rolling. I had zero input into that footage.”
Because of that, Scott said the footage is public domain.
“The bear made that on its own,” he says excitedly. “Which is frustrating. I think I probably could have made a lot of money licensing that.”
Because of that, it would be nice if viewers donated to the Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center — after all, “they’ve got bears to feed,” he said.
This story was originally published July 25, 2023 at 2:03 PM with the headline "Grizzly bear takes ‘selfie’ — inside its mouth — while playing with GoPro in Montana."
