Eliza Jinata, an animal communicator and wildlife veterinarian, found the experience very amusing after she recorded a video clip of an Asian black bear, with the scientific name Ursus thibetanus, walking on its hind legs, the same way humans do.
"I laughed when I first saw him walking like that and still smile whenever I see him walk like that in his big open enclosure," Jinata said.
She has her own educated guess why the bear is walking like the humans he meets every day.
"Before his current place was turned into a rescue center, it functioned as a zoo where visitors could feed him and other bears by throwing food from outside the fence. With his smaller and malnourished body, it is easier for him to stand on his hind leg because his spine can support his light body weight," she explained.
This special bear was freed from a bile farm where it was detained in a small cage and served very little food, preserving its existence for bile extraction purposes. The major healing ingredient in bear bile is ursodeoxycholic acid, which is the usual component of Chinese holistic medicine.
South Korea continues to be one of two countries to permit bear bile farming legally. As reported in 2009, about 1,374 bears exist in approximately 74 bile farms where they are caged for slaughter to meet the demands of old-fashioned Asian medicine.
The Asian black bear is also called the white-chested bear or moon bear. It is commonly medium-sized and adapted to tree life. Although most Asian black bears are herbivorous, they can be very aggressive toward humans especially if provoked.
Bears can smell, see and hear better standing up compared to when they are moving on all four legs, so if you see a bear standing up, it is probably checking what is blocking its frontal view.
Back in 2014, another black bear was videotaped walking upright along a New Jersey neighborhood, and as the Inquisitr initially reported, wildlife officials stressed that the recording was not a hoax. Asian black bears, like one featured in Laos, are regarded as a bipedal species of bear, able to walk over a half mile on their hind legs.
Jinata believed that this black bear was malnourished because of how short its legs and body are compared to its head.
The bear in the video is also much smaller compared to a normal adult Asian black bear of the same age, but that also makes it easier for him to walk the way humans do.
