Man or Bear Debate
I have been hearing a lot about the “Man or Bear” debate lately. For those who aren’t familiar with the controversy, it seems to have started with a short TikTok video in which random women were asked whether they would rather be stuck in a forest with a man or a bear. Most women in the video chose a “bear.” In the viral response that followed, that vast majority of women also choose the bear. What is bothering me as a statistician is the terrible math being used, if it’s used at all, in defending the bear.
The first question that should come to mind in choosing between a man or bear in what type of bear? The two main types of bears in the United States and Canada are the black and brown bear. The grizzly is included among the brown bears.
The population of black bears in the US and Canada is about 600,000. In the four years from 2020 to 2023, there have been 6 fatal attacks by black bears. That comes to a ratio of bears to fatal attacks per year of 400,000 to 1. I list my sources at the end of this newsletter.
Meanwhile, the population of brown bears is about 55,000 with 10 fatal attacks from 2020 to 2023. That comes to a ratio of bears to fatal attacks per year of 22,000 to 1. So, the average brown bear is 18x as dangerous as the average black bear. I submit that an intelligent answer to the man or bear question should consider the type of bear.
The hard part about this question is comparing bears to men. I had a passionate conversation with a female friend taking the bear’s side. She correctly knew it would take statistics to get me to take a stance on this issue, so she sent me this video.
The gentleman in the video makes the mistake of answering the wrong question – what is more dangerous the average man or the average bear. He concludes the average man is more than two times as dangerous as the average bear. However, that is not what is being asked! The original question asks which is more dangerous PER ENOUNTER. I submit that most bears, especially black bears, are not likely to attack anyone because they live deep in the woods and don’t have many encounters with people. The average bear does not pose a big threat because we simply don’t encounter them often enough. However, an actual encounter with a hungry and angry brown bear is not likely to go well. I invite you to watch the movie Grizzly Man if you don’t agree with me.
Personally, I’ve encountered wild bears five times, all of them black bears. Two encounters were in Yosemite where the bears paid no attention to me. Two were in Lake Tahoe, again when they paid no attention to me. The other was in Alaska where I observed the bear stealing trash bags out of a trash can in Juneau.
I asked my brother who works for the forest service in Wisconsin and Michigan. One of his duties is teaching bear safety. I asked him the probability that an encounter with a bear would turn violent. He said 0.01%, but admitted it was just an educated guess. He added, “I learned that there have been zero human fatalities from bear in Wisconsin, but 3 in Michigan, including one circus fatality from a brown bear.” He would probably not be happy with me even quoting him, so I’ll leave his name out of it, but I have so little to go on that I mention it at all.
What is the answer then? Let me be the first to say that to properly answer the question we would need to see proper statistics on encounters between women and both men and bears. The problem is nobody that I know of is counting encounters with either when nothing happens. However, if I were a woman and were somehow forced into either scenario, I would probably go with a black bear over a man, but a man over a brown bear. If it were an average bear, I would consider that 8.4% of bears in the US and Canada are black bears and go with the average bear. However, I fully admit this is based on anecdotal evidence only. Let me be the first to admit that.
If anyone has statistics on the probability of attack per encounter, I would be happy to see them and perhaps write a follow-up newsletter on that topic. However, for now, thank you for letting me rant about the inappropriate use of statistics in addressing the question.
For discussion on this topic, please visit my forum at Wizard of Vegas and the thread “Man or Bear”.
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