A YouTuber went viral after waiting in a bear’s den and meeting the creature when it returned.
As reported by Metro, YouTuber Stefan Jankovich went viral for an Instagram video where he can be seen in a bear’s cave, nervously waiting for it to return. When it does, it looks in the cave at him and eventually starts stepping inside to get a closer look. Jankovich can be heard breathing heavily during the encounter.
As Jankovich slowly leaves the den, the bear sniffs his head and then sniffs the camera, giving us all a close up of his mouth and nose. Jankovich stands and slowly moves past the bear who sniffs him continuously while he moves.
His next Instagram reel shows him up a tree with bears sniffing around at the base and wandering the area. Bears can climb trees, and one starts to make its way up to where Jankovich is perched. The tree has some wooden slats on it to make climbing up easier.
Some people doubted that the original video was a legitimate wild bear, and another reel shows Jankovich feeding bears by hand. They’re surrounded by wooden jungle-gym like structures in what appears to be a walled-off enclosure, suggesting these are all bears in captivity, and not wild bears.
Jankovich has posted a 26 minute video to his YouTube channel where he explains he went to the Ozren mountains in Bosnia to meet bears that a man found “when they were small and saved them from certain death.” In the video we see him meeting the bears in their enclosure and feeding them sweets, which they apparently like.
In other news, an upcoming indie open-world action-adventure game has been compared to The Legend of Zelda and Studio Ghibli.