I'm reading "The soft, fluffy toy designed to scare off killer bears/The Monster Wolf Mini will keep hikers safe with flashing lights and a built-in growl" (London Times).
That's from last February, but it was one of the clickable "related articles" accompanying a new article titled "Four injured as bear rampages through office complex/The attack in Fukushima is the latest incident in a part of Japan where animals and humans compete for space" (video of the attack at the link).
Here's Monster Wolf Mini:
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32 comments:
Is the Monster Wolf Mini available for sale in the US?
I think the main effect of the Monster Wolf Mini would be to baffle the bear rather than scare it.
In an alternate reality, Japan would legalize Alaska-style 10mm Auto and 454 Casull handguns because hungry bears eventually learn that a scarecrow is just a scarecrow.
In a different alternate reality, they'd put Halloween-style motion detecting ghosts and witches as scarecrows along every trail.
Monster wolf and killer bear a'walkin through the forest
Growling back and forth at what the other’n has to say
Killer bear is hungry and sees monster wolf's a plushie
And Oo-de-lally, oo-de-lally, bear really thinks that's gay
Oh sweet Jesus, what have we done to the Japanese, and what have the British done to themselves?
It’s not available in the U.S., for various reasons, according to AI.
Regards.
Lori (reader_iam)
These Japanese bears are a subspecies of a genus that includes the Alaskan Brown Bear, Ursus arctos, one of the most formidable carnivores on the planet, topped only by the Polar Bear. These animals are far too intelligent and adaptable to be reliably deterred by an obnoxious toy. Somebody's gonna die thinking Monster Wolf Mini will keep him safe while hiking through bear country.
Think about it for a moment. Humans and U. arctos have been competing for space since Homo erectus hunters migrated into northeastern Asia 800,000 years ago. Over the last 200 years, humans have been carrying arms far more effective than stone-tipped spears. If bears could be reliably deterred from defending their territories or offspring, the mere scent of a nearby firearm-carrying human ought to send the bears running. But this doesn't always happen. Bears aren't thoughtless automata. They are emotionally complex beings who react to perceived threats with something akin to human rage.
If Japan let me carry guns legally I would probably move there at some point.
Everything costs about 1/3rd in Japan and they don't tolerate human animals.
I thought Japan was expensive as heck? CC, JSM
@john mosby --
The Yen devalued after Japan capitulated on its 1990s-era bad loans.
It was 75-80 Y-to-D in the 1990s, and is now roughly 160 Y-to-D.
The only way I can see that plush working against bears is if you can successfully hide a firearm inside of it from authorities.
Japan has forgotten why they bred Akitas.
With fewer Japanese every year, it seems like the humans and the bears should be able to come to some land-sharing agreement.
Japanese Bear Attacks have been going on for a while. At one point they sent some Japanese Self Defense Force guys up there to do....well, something, but they were not carrying guns. This is a small, silly, niche story that mostly has legs because it reminds us of Godzilla and because it gives a picture of Japan other than claustrophobic, over crowded cities.
The Ainu have a long and interesting history with bears, including killing them using primitive methods. They're quite good at it if Japan's current Yayoi leadership would just let them start culling them again. Alas the anti-hunting anti-conservation mind virus has burrowed in there too.
Wow, I had no idea. I was stuck in the 70's paradigm of Japan being super expensive. I looked up some cost-of-living websites just now that said you can live in Tokyo for $1600/month. Maybe I should retire there! Japan could solve some of their population-pyramid issues, counterintuitively, by bringing in gaijin retirees with hard-currency pensions. We'll need someone to care for us, but the cash infusion would boost the Japanese AI and robotics industries. We would disrupt the homogeneity, but from the "top down:" alternative 1st rather than 3rd world ways of life.
On the gun issue, some gun writer a while back said that if Japan and Switzerland swapped their gun laws, they would both keep their low, low crime rates. Because it's homogeneity, not laws, that keeps the crime down in both places. That's a long way of saying you probably don't "need" a gun in Japan, at least against 2-legged animals. CC, JSM
Japan, a country the size of California, fit ~125M people in cities along the southern line between Tokyo and Fukuoka. Culturally they consider everything more than a few miles from the train lines to be wilderness. In their minds everything up north (e.g., Nagano/Japanese Alps, Akita, Hokkaido) might as well be a long and dangerous journey to Alaska or the South Pole.
Given the aging and shrinking population, many many many small towns and even well-located cities (e.g., Yamaguchi) are shrinking and/or returning to nature. The old people cluster in the major cities more and more.
Most cities are on the flats near farmland, while the hills and mountains nearby remain forests. Without active logging and farming out of town, bears are free to control to more and more of the country.
Curtis LeMay must have put saltpeter in the napalm used to fire bomb Tokyo. This was clear to me when I went to Epcot about 7 years ago. The Japanese pavilion was dedicated to Kawaii Cute Culture. They must have modified ritual Seppaku to castration.
We were awakened when a bear tipped over my trash bin last night at 1AM. It's "bear proof", but the lid came open anyway. We lay there listening to the beast munching for a while, then got up and went outside. It fled as soon as I turned the lights on. As I picked up the trash, I heard another container go over down the road a bit.
Two hours later it was back and tipped the bin over again, but this time it didn't open. The bear didn't hang around.
It must be a thrill for the bear when a container finally comes open, like when a slot machine pays out.
Bears rampaging through offices in Fukishima? And nobody has made a dramatic connection to radioactivity left over from the nuclear plant disaster? It will slowly ramp up from here as the livestock starts disappearing....then the fishing boats are found to have huge bite marks in them.....and then people start vanishing without a trace...and then finally, (Act II) The Beast will finally appear, glowing red eyes, wild brown hair, 25 ft tall and doubling in size every 24 hours, so forth. Then, of course... Godzilla is summoned. Godzilla meets The Army in Act III.
Lucky charm blinks honks
Fails. Blood drops like black blossoms
fall in the moonlight
Yeah, if I’m headed into bear country I want the Monster Wolf Maxi.
You thought cocaine bear was bad enough
If that worked, I can make those sounds myself from behind my sights. Batteries not required.
Send the bears feminists. They're convinced they're more tamable than dudes.
Was a discussion here about stun gun zappers scaring dogs and some wild animals away. Wonder if it would work on bears.
How do the bears know which hikers carry bear spray? They taste spicier than the hikers who don't carry it.
I dunno. I would not want to be among the first hikers going solo in the Blue Ridge Mountains or Glacier National Park and hope that your little stuffed toy, which looked so cute online, looks and sounds fearsome to a hungry Grizzly or Black bear.
Or you could simply carry a stun gun which would work much better without looking like something a predator would eat.
Stun guns won't get through the fur/skin of a bear, and stand to dissapate across the large mass of tissue and fat. Bear spray may sort of work if the bear isn't in the mood to be violent.
Basil Brush! that's a favorite character that I grew up with and haven't heard about in a long time!
"narciso said...
You thought cocaine bear was bad enough
6/3/26, 8:45 AM"
Bad enough? I'm waiting for "Cocaine Bear II"
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