The Problem Behind a Viral Video of a Persistent Baby Bear (theatlantic.com)

Ed Yong, writing for The Atlantic: For many people, a two-and-a-half-minute video of a baby brown bear trying to scale a snow-covered mountain was a life-affirming testament to the power of persistence. As it begins, the cub is standing with its mother on the side of a perilously steep ridge. The mother begins walking across, and despite slipping a few times on the loose snow, she soon reaches the top. Her cub, following tentatively after her, isn't so fortunate. It loses its footing and slides several feet. It pulls itself together and reattempts the ascent, before slipping again.

Finally, the cub nears the top. But as the footage zooms in to focus on the moment of reunion, the mother inexplicably swipes at the youngster with her paw, sending it hurtling downward again. It slides a long way, scrabbling for purchase and finding some just before it hits a patch of bare rock. Once again, it starts to climb, and after what seems like a nail-biting eternity for anyone watching, it reaches its mother. The two walk away.

The video was uploaded to the ViralHog YouTube channel on Friday, and after being shared on Twitter, it rapidly went viral. At the time of this writing, it has been watched 17 million times. The cub's exploits were equal parts gif, nature documentary, and motivational poster. It had all the elements of an incredible story: the most adorable of protagonists, rising and falling action (literally), and a happy ending. It was a tale of tenacity in the face of adversity, triumph against the odds. But when biologists started watching the video, they saw a very different story.

The video, they say, was clearly captured by a drone. And in it, they saw the work of an irresponsible drone operator who, in trying to film the bears, drove them into a dangerous situation that almost cost the cub its life. "I found it really hard to watch," says Sophie Gilbert, an ecologist at the University of Idaho who studies, among other things, how drones affect wildlife. "It showed a pretty stark lack of understanding from the drone operator of the effects that his actions were having on the bears." (It wasn't just scientists, either; several drone pilots were also dismayed by the footage.)

Comments

Re:What a crock of shit

[rizole]

1:15ish, the drone flys quickly into the action as the baby bear nears the top shortening the distance by at least half if not 3/4 in a couple of seconds. It seems clear to me that the mother can see the drone coming at them at speed. She looks repeatedly at the camera to her baby and back again. As the drone gets quite close she swipes at her baby to get it out the path of an unknown danger.

Lets look at some numbers. If it was very far away as you think then that's what? 300m? And lets be conservative with my figures and say it traveled 2/3rds of the distance in 3 seconds then that's 237kph or 147mph. That's unrealistic. The top speed of an average drone is around 50mph. At that speed it would have been 100m out and traveled 66m in 3 seconds.

But that's top speed, lets say it was moving at 20mph, that puts it 40m out and zooming in to around 13meters.

So, something you don't understand making a loud buzzing coming at you. Remember because of the doppler effect, the noise will increase in volume and pitch as it gets closer. Which would you prefer? 50mph and stopping 33meters/yards from the most precious person in your life in a dangerous situation or coming at you at 20 mph and pulling up around 13meters/yards?

Re:Not surprising.

[alexgieg]

And anyone who is outside of that boarder? Doesn't even register as a person.

Actually, the statistical distribution of that behavior has been mapped. To sum up studies that began in the late 1950's and continue until today, roughly 40% of the adult population thinks in terms of group, with a mentality of "what my group thinks is right, is right for me; what it thinks is wrong, is wrong for me; within my group there are individuals; outside my group there are no individuals, just other groups and their indistinct members; other groups are all wrong and shouldn't really exist, but if we have to interact with them, they are at best allies, at worst enemies, and most of the time indifferent." That's stage 3 in the Kohlberg scale of moral reasoning, which is one of the most well tested formal psychological theories ever, a gold standard in falsifiability and reproducibility when it comes to psychometrics.

Then, about 45% of the population thinks in terms of inter-group relationships, looking at society as composed of multiple groups, thinking in terms of inter-group rules of coexistence, and recognizing other groups as having in principle a right to exist as long as they don't try to damage the social fabric that keeps the different groups from fighting each other. That's stage 4 in the scale.

And then about 5% move beyond that and begin thinking that people are individuals first and foremost, group-affiliated second, and therefore that such boundaries are irrelevant. That's stage 5, and there are others.

So, while you're correct that most people are like that, in fact about 94% are like that if we take into account stages 1 and 2 (roughly equivalent to psychopathy and sociopathy), there are about 6% that do think of all, in the strong meaning of "all', as persons. But yes, it's certainly a minority.

More about the scale here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...