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The animal kingdom is brutal, and thanks to modern technology, we humans often have a front-row seat to its unforgiving nature. Brooks River live cameras captured a young grizzly bear cub being killed and eaten by an unrelated mother bear (Bear 806) Tuesday morning.
The slain cub was born this spring to Bear 909, a 10-year-old brown bear. Bear 909 started the season with two cubs, but has now lost both of them.
Explore.org operates the Brooks River live cams within Alaska’s Katmai National Park and held a special live chat to discuss the situation Tuesday afternoon. Resident naturalist Mike Fitz along with rangers Christine Loberg and Sarah Bruce hosted the talk about the “challenging” incident. The team shared that while infanticide by adult females does occur, this is likely the first documented case occurring in Brooks River.
Bear 806 had her own two cubs with her at the time of the attack: a 2.5-year-old cub and a 1.5-year-old cub. The 2.5-year-old cub, nicknamed “Biggie” (Junior 128), was adopted by Bear 806 earlier this spring after being abandoned by his mother, two-time Fat Bear Week champion Grazer. Bear 806’s cubs were seen interacting with the cub before the attack. After chasing and killing the cub, Bear 806 was seen feeding on the cub’s body while its two cubs watched. He later buried the carcass after feeding on it for about 20 minutes.
Another unidentified bear later dug up the cub and dragged the body away. Viewers speculated that she might have been the cub’s mother (Bear 909), but Fitz was unable to positively identify her. Bear 909 was later seen near the scene, chasing away other bears.
When asked for a possible reason behind the brutal attack, Fitz said: “We can be absolutely certain that this is not a case of infanticide by sexual selection, which is one explanation. That type of infanticide is driven by an adult bear wanting to mate with a bear and killing a cub that is not its own offspring so that that male bear can pass on its own genes. Therefore, there are no male bears involved in this type of situation.”
Experts at explore.org also do not suspect hunger as the motivation for the attack, stating that the river provides abundant salmon for the bears to fatten up. The team noted that the bear cub that fled from Bear 806 may have triggered a “predatory response.”
“We tell people when they come to Brooks Camp that if they encounter a bear, don’t run,” Bruce said. “You should never run from a bear because even though we see these bears doing all kinds of things, they are also predators. We see them mainly preying on fish, but today we saw some kind of predation with a cub and we’ve seen it before on bear cam as well. Bears are predators.”
When asked how they deal with the challenges of nature by being nature, the park rangers were thoughtful. “Being able to witness a lot of these things that we wouldn’t otherwise be able to witness without these cameras,” Bruce said. “I constantly have to remind myself that I too am part of this wild planet. This thing happening on Bear Cam is not separate from me also living on this Earth. This is simply what it means to be alive.”
Bear cam fans can watch the full discussion on YouTube. Warning: The following video includes images of the attack and its consequences.
806 Cub Attack Breakdown 7.28.26 | Brooks Live Chat
Stay tuned for popular science for continued coverage of the Brooks River Bears and Fat Bear Week.
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