Close-up footage of a grizzly bear eating a video camera

A still frame from a video shot by Brad Josephs of a grizzly bear sniffing a camera. (©Brad Josephs)

A still frame from a video shot by Brad Josephs of a grizzly bear sniffing a camera. (©Brad Josephs)

From Staff Reports

Grizzly bears are among the most popular and watched-for animals in Yellowstone National Park. Millions of visitors each year deploy cameras, binoculars and spotting scopes in hopes of seeing one of the great beasts.

For those that yearn for a close-up, first-hand experience, some new footage by an Alaskan biologist offers an amazing look at what it looks like to be food (or at least a potential curiosity) to a grizzly bear.

Brad Josephs, a naturalist interpreter specializing in bear biology and ecology, was guiding a trip in Alaska when he set up a GoPro camera. The small, rugged video cameras are often used by outdoor sports enthusiasts to capture extreme feats of skiing or cycling. Josephs used a rubber band to strap the camera to a rock.

He captured footage of an older mother grizzly and her 3-year-old cub, according to his website. One of the bears was curious about the camera and gave it a through sniff and overal “mouthing.” The resulting footage is one-of-a-kind, and about as close as most anyone would want to get to an actual set of grizzly bear teeth in the wild.

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