This tragic video is a sobering insight into just how brutal nature can be. A mother Cantabrian brown bear and her cub are perching on the edge of a cliff. A male approaches and tries to get at the cub but he intends to kill it and the mother bear knows it. So, they enter into an intense fight that ends with them both hurtling down the hillside. The male seems to fall further and harder than the female and we learn that she survives but the male does not.
The Cantabrian Brown Bears of Spain
The brown bear population of northern Spain has teetered on the edge of extinction but now there is some hope. Many hundreds of years ago, Spain had a thriving brown bear population that extended as far as Andalucía, on the Mediterranean coast. However, they were very widely hunted from the 16th century and eventually disappeared from the whole of Spain except for the Cantabrian Mountains. The species that lives here is Ursus arctos pyrenaicus.
In the mid-1990s, there were only 50 bears left in the region and extinction seemed almost inevitable.
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However, once poaching had been tackled, their fortunes were revived. Whilst they are still endangered, there are now more than 400 and their numbers are constantly increasing.
It is not unusual for male bears to try to kill bear cubs
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Why Do Animals Commit Infanticide?
Infanticide in the animal kingdom is the act of intentionally killing the young of the same species. It is carried out by mature individuals of the species and is committed by both males and females. We often see reports of it happening in mammals (particularly in lions, dolphins, and primates). But it is also actually seen in rotifers (microscopic organisms), fish, insects, amphibians, and birds.
There is usually some gain for the animal that commits infanticide but sometimes they gain no benefit from it at all and these cases are called ‘nonadaptive’ or ‘pathological.’
In the case of these bears, it was likely to be a reproductive strategy. Getting rid of the cub will trigger the mother bear to come into heat in the coming days and the male will then be able to mate with her. This means that she will raise his cubs as opposed to someone else’s. So, sadly this situation was always going to end with death. In this case, it was the male and not the cub.