A Jaguar or Leopard just looks and acts like a big house cat..
but it can crush your skull with one bite and can drag your dead body 30 feet vertically up a tree.
On a less jokey note, pretty much every living mammal has been subjected to domestication attempts at some point in history. Bears, elephants, tigers, hippopotami, moose... More often than not, there's some kind of inherent physiological reason why it doesn't work.
Some animals don't breed well in captivity (pandas, famously, but cheetahs are another classic case). Some can't handle captivity at all - the few efforts at keeping Great Whites in captivity ended with the animals bludgeoning themselves to death on the walls of their enclosures. Others are consistently too aggressive to effectively tame (zebras, coyotes, chimps, elephants, and pythons are notable for all the historic instances domestication failed for these reasons). And some simply aren't pleasant household companions - skunks, raccoons, and foxes are all notable for their powerful odors and their propensity to destroy the interiors of homes.
There's some speculation as to whether cats ever were actually domesticated successfully, or whether we've simply chosen to ignore their feral habits as such.
Those speculators haven't met the right cats. (Also, we've been living together for thousands of years and have bred some incredibly useless varieties, it's a ridiculous claim.)
Looked it up fairly recently (cuz you know men got mad about bears or whatever) but don’t have source on me: Black bears cause about 1.2 human deaths per year across all of America.
That's probably about right. Black bears don't get into fights they don't have to. I don't know how many dozens of black bears I've been around, but the only problem I've ever had involved a cub. Even that was a communication issue! I was trying to get the hell out of there, the cub was moving towards me, and the sow didn't like me moving in any direction lol
Made myself as big as possible, had my .357 out just in case, and not as slowly as I meant to continued to walk backwards the way I had come. Once she stopped coming towards me I turned around and went back to where I knew a clearing was. I plopped my ass in the middle of the clearing just in case, and waited a while. Once the shadows moved enough I headed back up the path and got to my truck.
It's kinda why I never got the whole would you rather thing. As a fairly big dude, I'd much prefer the bear over a man or a woman. The bear is more than likely just going to scamper off. Even decent people in bad situations are very dangerous creatures, and more than likely, I'm just going to have to take care of a complete stranger in the woods.
A black bear is more likely to scamper off. A brown bear is going to expect you to scamper off. As an avid backpacker, I'm not stoked about the plan to reintroduce brown bears to my state.
As an avid backpacker, I'm not stoked about the plan to reintroduce brown bears to my state.
I do a lot of hiking as well, and yes brown bears are definitely more of a pucker your b-hole scenario. But for the most part as long as you don't sneak up on one accidentally or accidentally get between the bear and the cubs, they're fairly harmless. Ya just gotta have something that makes some noise when you're hiking, I have buddies that just strap a cow bell on their packs.
It would still be pretty rare for one to outright attack a full grown person, they are generally aware that peeps be dangerous.
The problem with that is then you don't see all of the other wildlife that is fun to come across while in the wilderness. You won't have any more random deer or racoon sightings, since everything will run from your bell. Obviously it's better to be safer, but I'm generally pretty happy that we don't have fearless apex predators in our forests. We have a few apex predators with the black bear, grey wolf, and cougar, but those are all very wary of humans, and generally not a threat like the brown bear would be.
That's fair, though it doesn't seem to bother the little critters like rabbits or racoons for some reason. But yeah, it'll def make the deer scamper off.
Tigers are fuzzy and cuddly, and they look like they can kill, with self-sharpening claws and big canine teeth.
We look like funny apes, and what makes us dangerous are all strange magics like sticks that spit rocks, mists of death and our capacity to summon and play with fire. Then we build giant nests of concrete and lights and clockwork machines.
Dying of easily treatable disease because one can't afford insulin or a healthy diet vs being loved to death? If only certain people had the choice. And I didn't mean "loved" in the euphamistic sense.
