A cellphone video of a giant polar bear cuddling up and patting a sled dog in northern Manitoba is rapidly turning into an Internet sensation.
David De Meulles recorded the video over the weekend in Churchill, on the western coast of Hudson Bay. The fearsome Arctic predator can be seen towering over a dog, tenderly petting it while the two nuzzle under the fall sun.
“I had no idea what was going to happen, and then sure enough he started petting that dog, acted like he was a friend,” David De Meulles told CBC News. “I just so happen to catch a video of a lifetime.”
Friendly behaviour
De Meulles, who was born and raised in Churchill, said he’s never seen anything like it.
“I’ve known the bears to have somewhat friendly behaviour with the dogs, but for a bear to pet like a human would pet a dog is just mind-blowing,” De Meulles said.
“It was a beautiful sight to see, and I just can’t believe an animal that big would show that kind of heart toward another animal.”
De Meulles works as a heavy-duty mechanic in the northern community, known as Canada’s capital for polar bear watching, and occasionally picks up shifts as a tour guide for his friend Brian Ladoon who owns and operates North Star Tours and raises a rare breed of sled dogs on his property.
‘Nature’s will’
What De Meulles and the tourists witnessed isn’t entirely out of the ordinary, Ladoon told CBC News.
“How they do it, it’s not my will, it’s nature’s will,” said Ladoon, who has been raising the rare breed of Canadian sled dog for more than 40 years on his land.
Usually the sled dogs, who have also been used by the Inuit as sentries and for hunting, keep the “nasty” bears in their place, but for the most part they all get along strangely well, Ladoon said.
Based on reporting by Bryce Hoye of CBC News
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