Sweet-toothed bear lured out of Japanese supermarket
by AFP Staff Writers
Tokyo (AFP) Dec 2, 2024

A bear that rampaged through a Japanese supermarket for two days was lured out with food coated in honey, trapped and due to be killed on Monday, local officials said.

Japan has a growing problem with bears, with a record six human fatalities from attacks and more than 9,000 of the animals killed in the previous fiscal year.

In the latest incident, police received an emergency call early Saturday that a bear had wounded a 47-year-old man in a supermarket in Akita, on Japan's main island of Honshu.

A gash on the man's head "will take at least a week to heal once his stitches get removed, according to a doctor", a police spokesman told AFP.

The supermarket was evacuated with the animal left inside, where it laid waste to the meat department, according to the Asahi Shimbun daily.

Finally early Monday, the bear walked into a trap containing "rice bran, bananas, apples, and bread, all coated with honey", an Akita official told AFP.

"We prepared two traps, and one of them captured the bear on the backyard side of the supermarket," he said.

The animal was due to be killed later Monday, the police spokesman said.

- Hungry bears -

Human fatalities from bears in the fiscal year to March 31 included an elderly woman attacked in her garden and a fisherman whose severed head was found by a lake.

The period had the highest number of deaths since the government started collecting data from 2006 to 2007.

More than 200 other people were involved in incidents with bears.

In the current fiscal year so far, three people have been killed.

Experts say the dwindling human population in rural areas of Japan is causing hungry bears to come closer to villages and towns.

Other factors include climate change affecting the omnivores' food supply and their hibernation times. This summer tied for Japan's warmest on record.

In the previous fiscal year, a record 9,097 bears were killed, more than twice that of the previous period, according to the environment ministry.

Local media have reported that authorities are having problems finding enough hunters to shoot the animals, citing Japan's declining and ageing population.

The country has two types of bears: moon bears and the larger brown bear, which can weigh half a tonne (1,100 pounds), outrun a human and, in Japan, only lives in the main northern island of Hokkaido.

Related Links
Darwin Today At TerraDaily.com