An extremely rare black bear attack on a human occurred in Tuolumne County on Monday, and the 24-year-old jogger who was the victim of the attack has reportedly since been released from the hospital.
Although it is extremely rare for a California black bear to attack a human, we have seen several examples over the past nine months. The first time this happened was in November 2023, when a 71-year-old woman was fatally mauled by a black bear in Downieville in Sierra County. The bear had apparently been stalking her for months. Last month, a black bear attacked a man in Yosemite National Park, ripping his clothing.
Now we have another one of those attacks, as a black bear attacked a 24-year-old jogger in the Long Barn community of Tuolumne County around 5 p.m. last Monday, SFGate reports. While that report notes that the man is in stable condition, other media reports indicate that he has already been released from the hospital.
As Sacramento’s KOVR explains, the unidentified 24-year-old man was running away when he encountered a bear cub. The mother bear came out from between the trees and began chasing the jogger. She attacked him and knocked him into a ditch, leaving him with several scratches and scrapes. (Ironically, one of the scrapes was on his thigh, “exactly where the man has a bear tattoo, according to KOVR.”) He hit the bear with a stick and was able to escape, but only briefly.
“I see this young man running down the street and a bear is literally chasing him and biting him, and his shirt is flapping in the wind,” neighbor Heather Silfies told KOVR. “It was just torn up and he didn’t have one of his shoes on the whole time, so he’s literally running shoeless.”
The man then jumped onto the roof of Silfie’s SUV. “The young man is standing on the roof of our Escalade,” she continued. “The bear is standing on the Escalade and trying to climb up. So she has her foot on the running board and is literally jumping at him, wanting to get on the roof, just wanting to attack him.”
The bear was successfully chased away and, according to People Magazine, the unnamed man was treated at Adventist Health in Sonora. However, Silfies told KOVR that the man has since returned to her home to thank her family, so it sounds like he was released.
“Attackling a human is not normal behavior for a bear,” Patrick Foy, director of the Department of Fish and Wildlife, told the local Union Democrat newspaper. “This is absolutely not normal behavior for a bear. This bear has shown unusual aggression toward a human. The bear is still roaming the community. We have not caught it. We don’t know if we will catch this one. The likelihood is slim because this bear is not used to humans and human food sources.”
And Foy added: “If we get a bear in the trap and get a DNA profile of the bear in the trap and that bear matches the DNA samples we collected from the attack, that bear will be euthanized.”
Related: Northern California woman killed by black bear had complained for months about animals stalking her house (SFist)
Image: American black bear (Ursus americanus), cub. Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee )Getty Images)
