Brown Bear Mother and Cub, Alaska by David & Shiela Glatz
Via Flickr:
Brown Bear mother on the alert to protect her yearling cub. A few minutes after this image was taken, a large male emerged and the mother and cub ran away.
Does anyone remember Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real?聽That documentary where a T-rex fights a dragon and convinced an entire generation of kids that Dragons were real.
I still recall when someone jovially and nonchalantly retold how while they were driving they saw a snake in the road, and they then proceeded to turn their car around further down the road in order to go back and run the snake over.
I still recall when as a child I was asked what my favorite animal was, and when I responded "the wolf" being met with genuine horror and disgust from the other person.
To this day those times still bother me immensely.
We need wildlife education so so much, it hurts me to think about how many animals, snake and wolves included, that are demonized and hated by people.
I'm so unbelievably lucky that I was raised watching Animal Planet and Steve Irwin and was allowed to experience nature and capture reptiles and watch tadpoles grow into teeny frogs and got to interact with a feral cat colony, I was taught to love and respect the natural world and I wish everyone could have that. Once you get close to all these different animals, really see them and understand them, you learn to admire and respect even the most dangerous animals because you learn they aren't built of malice but they're all beautiful and fascinating creatures that we can live beside.