If you had to be lost in a forest, and you had to be lost with a bear or a random man, would you choose the bear or the man ?

[AceKitten]

Wanted to ask you guys on here as a more mature audience then say tiktoc etc

True but is the bear going to attack me? If the only information I have is bear or man, I would pick bear because the chances that the bear will avoid me are much higher than the chances that the man will not be predatory in some way.

Obviously, if the bear has cubs and the man is a park ranger, my reply would change.

Not sure - my bear risk assesment skills having live entire life in UK are very poor. I think polar bear I'd be at the highest bear risk so then would be less risk with man.

Hard to say though man may be useful or may be dangerous - bear dangerous or ignores me.

If I'm in woods with plan and equipment relatively happy - then don't need help - bear who's likely to ignore me would be better option.

I think women have to think and risk asses more and men are thrown by that.

Saw similar with two photos of semi famous man - before and after year doing lots of gym and a lot of women were saying they prefered before pics and men insisting they were all liars. There was then some more surveys done and women were looking at pictures and thinking a mix of intimidating and spend all his time and money at gym so bad bet in partner - they liked fit but not extreme levels and men especially US men couldn't fathom that as they just looked at surface level image.

Can I go for the squirrel, third option?
If not, if I got to gave 10 seconds to look at both man and bear is choose the one that gave me the least Spidey senses.
If I couldn't choose, Id choose the man as most are not bad!

But the thought experiment isn’t ’would you rather interact with a man or bear’ it’s ’would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or bear’. A bear will actively try to avoid you. And only really attacks if threatened, or protecting cubs, or you’ve been foolish enough to get near its food or water source.

I lived for over a decade in Canada. 2-5 bear deaths a year, over the whole of the US and Canada. And there are a lot of bears! While the homicide rate, understanding that most are male perpetrators, is around 1000 for Canada and somewhere a bit less than 20000 for the States.

I don’t think the bear is a great option, I still think the whole point is that the man isn’t either. Clearly in Canada, bears might be a worse bet. But in the States…

I mean most violent men won’t leave you alone if you carry a bell and shout ‘hey bear’. Bears mostly will.

I'd go for Random Man. Two people are better than one for survival and if any bears show up they can maul him while I get away.

Maths!

BC in Canada, with a high population of bears for North America has vaguely 150,000 black and grizzly bears. Less than one fatality (for the humans, the poor bears get killed a lot) in five years. So that’s roughly 1 death per half a million bears. 2.8 million men and around 150 murders per year. Around 80-90% will be male perpetrators. So 120 (at least) men killing people. 1 murder for every 25,000 men.

Somewhere around 500 poor bears every year get killed if they are risky at all (seeking food in campsites etc.) so their choice would definitely be ‘bear’ not ‘man’. But also, making sure risky bears are not able to continue being risky, and not making sure dangerous men are similarly (prison, not shooting) means men continue to be risky and bears don’t. They do sometimes tranquilise and airlift dangerous bears to remote places with no people. Just saying…

Bears are much safer by those calculations. Disclaimer; I’m not good at maths.

Are we talking a friendly fairy tale bear or the one from The Revenant? Is the man Ray Mears or some survival specialist or just a madman with an axe??

Ngl I'd rather be sexually harassed than mauled by a bear.

The man is most likely in the forest for the same reason as you. Its unlikely the man is going deep into the forest to find female victims.

Assume the outcome is I am still alive.. the trauma from rape is much worse than the one from animal attack

Bear a 1000 times !

I said sexually harassed not rape. The post I was replying to was talking about low level sexual harassment by men

I don't think your surviving being mauled by a bear, tbh I'd rather neither

You’re right ofc.. I was pointing out worst case scenario

I once met a man in a forest. Nothing happened, we nodded at each other then continued to drag the bodies, eh I mean things we needed to dispose of …

Also type of bear- pandas, polars etc would all probably kill you too, wouldn’t they?

Frequency
I think I have encountered a different type of man to a lot of women on this thread. Ime, most men are not nice. Most will not murder or rape, but they will engage in low-level sexual harassment and/or assault.

Im so sorry you’ve encountered the men you have xxxxxxx

Obviously a man. I'd be glad to be lost with another person rather than on my own. I'd be terrified to be with a bear. Even if the man turned out to be a psycho I'd have a chance unlike with a bear but the chances of happening upon a psycho would be low.

Assuming black or grizzly bear I might take the man - as I could outsmart or even potentially outrun/out power the man (esp if he hadn’t a gun) but I couldn’t outrun/out power a bear.

Obv assuming the random man is a psycho killer.

Random man

Likelihood is that the random man isn't going to want to harm me. He'll probably want to work together to survive.

I have been in a field with a bear, in USA. I'll take the man.

I've encountered both on dog walks and id choose man over bear any day. Yes black bears can be scarred away but they are still fucking massive up close and your chances of fighting one off zero to none. Then there's grizzlies. I bet the group of kid's and teachers in Bella Coola last week would have much rather bumped into a man on their field trip.

I presume you are joking. How many bears does the average woman ever meet compared with the number of men she meets?

What kind of bear? I'd feel alright about a panda, but a grizzly or a polar bear I don't fancy my chances.

People saying bears don't torture and will kill you quickly evidently haven't read about the death of Timothy Treadwell. I think I'll take my chances with a man over being eaten alive by a bear and being conscious and aware of it consuming me while it's happening, to be honest.

Or if you're strong of stomach look up the pictures of Jeremy Evans or Wes Perkins to see what surviving a bear attack might look like. Nein danke.

Maybe my overwhelming fear of bears is winning out here.

I thought about Timothy Treadwell as soon as I saw the thread title.

I understand why on an emotional level some women would say they'd pick the bear, but faced with the choice in real life, I seriously doubt they would. If were standing in front of two doors, behind one of which was a bear and behind the other a man chosen at random from the world of men, people would honestly walk through the door to the bear? Aside from the fact that the man might be perfectly fine or actively nice, even if he weren't, he'd be easier to fight off than a bear!

Didn't they ask men and women this and all men chose a man but women choose the bear?

I mean a bear will definitely kill me and if I'm lost in a forest it will have the advantage. A man may or may not kill me. Neither is a great choice for a woman.

The most dangerous animal, by far, is the mosquito. Bears are nothing in comparison.

The most dangerous person, to almost every woman in every place in every time in history, is her intimate male partner. That is why thinking about the man or bear is important. Not to actually balance your odds of being killed, but to point out that men are in fact, very dangerous to women. And they are. Much more dangerous than bears. Even in bear areas.

My favourite quote was someone who said, after thousands of angry male responses to this question, “even in a hypothetical scenario, men won’t take no for an answer”.

OK this is one of many on this thread.

A bear won’t definitely kill you. Not even slightly. Bears mostly avoid people. Why does everyone think bears are going around killing every human they get near? The forests of the Pacific NW are full of both people, and bears. Almost no one is getting mauled.

As bears tend to maul and eat people, probably a msn might be better. 🤷‍♀️