why-animals-do-the-thing:

a-stranger-you-know:

64bitwar:

shinhito:

So fucking cute.

the bear just agrees to start jumping with him like “alright yeah let’s do that”

@why-animals-do-the-thing Do you have time to spare for an explanation? I have no idea as to whether the bear is playing or something else

This is Luka, a female Andean bear at the Nashville zoo. Without more context, it’s not entirely clear what this behavior is – because the clip starts in the middle of the behavior, its impossible to know what the precursors to the situation were. 

Quotes in some of the news articles from when the video went viral state that the kid started jumping first, and then Luka came over and “joined” him in a jumping session that lasted about ten minutes. However, we can’t know if that’s the full story just from that, because there’s a lot of other possible things that could have occurred that the guests might not have noticed. 

I reached out to a friend at the Nashville zoo, and it turns out, they’re not quite sure why Luka does this either! One good thing, though, is that it doesn’t seem like it’s a stereotypy (a repetitive or compulsive behavior). This video was taken shortly after her exhibit debut at Nashville, where she was transferred to as part of a Species Survival Plan breeding program. Apparently Luka had done a version of this jumping behavior while in the exhibit a couple times before the videoed interaction, and that the zoo was actually curious enough about what it was that they were studying her to see when it occurred and what situations it happened in. So while they’re not entirely sure why Luka chooses to jump, the ethogram the zoo conducted indicates that the behavior doesn’t appear to be harmful to her or compulsive, and that it seems to be decreasing in frequency since the video went viral in June. They’re asking zoo guests to not encourage it in the future or try to get her to jump, because it’s important to let Luka do her own bear things rather than being encouraged to interact with visitors.

While this is an unusual behavior for sure, this video is actually cute – so long as you keep in mind that it’s the sort of thing that can’t always be guaranteed to be cute in all situations. A similar behavior could be a negative thing in a different situation with a different bear, but in this one, Luka is all good.