A video of a young man confronting a bear went viral in early September.
Lying in a den, the blogger appears terrified as the animal approaches him.
It is actually a staging carried out in a natural refuge.
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The information examined by the Verifiers
The sequence begins like any good horror film. Underground, facing the camera, a young man breathes noisily. The lens turns. At the end of the den, a brown bear appears. The animal advances, sees the videographer, and approaches him. After a few seconds, the young man decides to leave his shelter. The author of the images then lets the plantigrade smell his hair, avoiding any sudden movements and miraculously manages to extract himself from the trap.
A video as terrifying as it is fascinating, seen millions of times. And which has strongly provoked reactions from Internet users. In the comments, everyone has their own theory. “The probability of survival was 1%”one of them believes, while another assures that by keeping his cool, the young man “does not produce pheromones, so the bear does not normally attack it”The reason for such calm actually lies elsewhere.
A staging in a shelter
Among the videos that have gone viral, one of them cites the source of the images. A certain Stefan Jankovich. It is indeed on the Instagram account (new window)From this Serbian YouTuber we find the sequence in question, published on September 13. Viewed 79 million times, it is accompanied by this worrying message which gives little information: “Close to death.” In a second video posted the next day, he is again trapped. While he climbs onto a branch, apparently to escape the animals, two bears are waiting for him at the foot of the tree. “You won’t believe what happened to me. I spend 24 hours in the forest and a bear attacks me”he says dramatically. Finally, in a third and final video, he claims to have managed to become “best friend” with wild animals. And even offers one of them to retrieve a treat directly from his mouth. In the background of this third video, we can clearly see wooden buildings and a fence. And for good reason, the young man is not an anonymous walker lost in the depths of a forest.
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The one nicknamed “Janko” is a Serbian blogger known for offering incredible adventures to his millions of subscribers. It is on his YouTube channel, followed by 1.4 million people, that we learn a little more about this challenge. If the title of the 26-minute video is particularly sensationalist, the videographer makes it clear from the beginning that he did not film these images by chance in the middle of nature. He says he went to Mount Ozren, in Bosnia-Herzegovina to “spend 24 hours with bears”. The YouTuber explains from the outset that this is where a man has “found bears when they were little” and adopted them to save them from a “certain death”. Raised in captivity, the animals are therefore accustomed to humans.
On several occasions, “Janko” plays with the bears, caresses them and offers them treats so that they get used to his presence. “It’s an unforgettable experience with bears. You can come and see them on Mount Ozrem”he even says to his subscribers. “You won’t be able to play with them like that, I think, but you can take pictures.” In fact, as the blogger points out in the caption, the scene was filmed at the ParaGhost club, where visitors can visit a national reserve where the two animals, Masha and Lyubitsa, live. According to the photos available on the site’s website, “Janko” is far from being the only one to have come into contact with the animals in the shelter. (new window).
It is within this very controlled framework that “the craziest clip in the Balkans” was filmed. The excerpt in which the YouTuber finds himself trapped in a den is staged. In the entire video, the person in charge of the place suggests that the young man lie down in the crevasse, and reassures him: “They will not enter, but will stop just at the entrance.” We can see the legs of this man from beginning to end, present for the safety of the videographer. Stefan Jankovich is not an outstanding tamer, only a good actor.
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