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Comment by brainfish | Hacker News Reader

I live about 20 miles from ground zero of the original Yellowstone wolf reintroduction. I am an avid outdoorsperson and have never had an on-foot encounter with a wolf. They are exceedingly shy around humans; in the 25 years since the reintroduction there hasn't been a single attack on a human in Yellowstone despite both humans and wolves being literally everywhere in the area.

I'm not saying no one is afraid of going outdoors because of the wolves, but that fear would be completely irrational. Your chances of twisting your ankle badly enough that you get caught out and die of exposure are many orders of magnitude greater.

Edit to add: as an additional anecdote, we get a ton of tourists coming here to head outdoors because of their interest in the wolves and hopes of seeing one.

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Not to mention grizzly bears and bison(bison mostly due to idiots thinking they are tame) are both a far greater threat than the wolves. If you're worried about wolves in Yellowstone you're worried about the wrong thing.

You are basing the statement "fear of wolves is completely irrational" on your experience as an outdoorsperson and 25 years of yellowstone. This is not a good basis. Wolves had lived in huge populations and had been in conflict with humans for thousands of years, with human casualties. Humans were very much afraid of wolves, and rightly so. Physically weak and isolated humans such as children and elderly are prime targets of wolf attacks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beast_of_G%C3%A9vaudan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wolf_attacks

Are you arguing for or against? A mythology is not a good argument. A wikipedia entry of about 184 attacks within a decade (apologies if I miscounted) argues for wolves being a non-existant threat. I'm more afraid of riding in a car thank you.

Compare with dog attacks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_attack

Significant dog bites affect tens of millions of people globally each year. It is estimated that 2% of the U.S. population, 4.5–4.7 million people, are bitten by dogs each year. Most bites occur in children. Between 2005 and 2018 approximately 471 people were killed by dog bites in the United States, averaging 37 deaths per year.

I'm afraid of running into bears by accident while trail-running in areas with lots of black bears (not even brown! I'm a sissy), and meanwhile I had a run-in with a bull moose on a narrow mountain ledge and had to scramble up the mountain and hide behind a tree.... but I'm still not as afraid of moose as I am bears, even though I know moose are much more dangerous! So fear is weird and often irrational. We should probably assume that just telling people rational things about their fears won't assuage them.

The one time I pulled out my bear spray was for a moose.

I have had:

- A black bear suddenly charge toward me around a blind bend, stopping maybe 15-20 feet away, staring for a while before it took off down the side of the mountain

- A moose walk calmly by me, not much more than an arm’s length away

Both were absolutely terrifying experiences. Objectively, the bear encounter was probably the more dangerous (it was clearly startled so potentially unpredictable), but both the proximity and the casualness of the moose’s approach scared me much more.

That video of a moose running through waist deep snow is my canonical example of impressive feats of moose. I would not want to anger one. https://youtu.be/6GEhM2Byk7w?t=1m

Amazing to watch! But yeah I’ll be happy if I’m never anywhere near that close again.

probably because we have alot more neural wiring the recognizes bears as a threat while ruminant have long history as food thus less of a embedded fear reaction.

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