A live web-cam has captured dramatic footage showing a brown bear rushing to rescue her yearling cub after it tumbled over a waterfall in Alaska.
The footage, captured by Explore.org’s Bear Cam at Brooks Falls, shows the cub slip past mom at the top of the falls.
The footage continues with mom realizing that her cub was being swept downstream and charging across the water to end threats posed by nearby bears.
Comments beneath the post mostly pertained to the speed with which momma bear was able to reach her cub.
“For anyone who ever foolishly through they could outrun a bear…yeah…no,” one comment reads.
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Another: “Poor mom looks really stressed out from this one. All that huffing. And the way she keeps looking at the bear who just happened to be closest.”
Mom is cataloged as Bear 402. She’s one of dozens of brown bears that spend the summer feeding in the Brooks River in Katmai National Park.
Brooks Falls is one of the prime fishing spots and dominant bears position themselves atop or just below the falls to catch migrating sockeye salmon.
Explore.org has live-feed cameras positioned on the river so the public can watch the bears feed and interact.
Brown bears in Katmai National Park are among the largest bears on the planet, with some exceeding 1,000 pounds by season’s end. (Larger bears might eat as many as 40 salmon per day.)
The bears are the stars of Fat Bear Week, a fan-driven competition conducted each fall to determine which bear took the fullest advantage of feeding season.
The reigning champion is Bear 747, aka Bear Force One.
