- A black bear dubbed "Selfie Bear" has gone viral after pictures from a wildlife camera were shared.
- The Boulder, Colorado, wildlife camera caught 400 pictures of the curious bear looking at itself.
A curious black bear from Boulder, Colorado has gone viral after its "selfies" were shared online.
Captured in a wildlife camera operated by the Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks Department, the bear can be seen admiring itself from various angles in hundreds of different photos.
"Recently, a bear discovered a wildlife camera that we use to monitor wildlife across #Boulder open space," OSMP tweeted on Monday, prompting an outpouring of love for the bear. "Of the 580 photos captured, about 400 were bear selfies"
—Boulder OSMP (@boulderosmp) January 23, 2023
OSMP originally shared the photos on Instagram last year, but the selfies did not go viral until they were shared again on Twitter.
"Wildlife cameras help us learn what animals are out there and what they're up to over the course of a day, a week, or even years," read an OSMP statement about the viral bear photos. "And sometimes, that means taking a bunch of selfies, just like us."
The photos, captured in mid-November of last year, were taken by one of nine wildlife cameras operating across the department's 46,000 acres of protected land.
"The motion-detecting cameras provide us a unique opportunity to learn more about how local species use the landscape around us while minimizing our presence in sensitive habitats," Will Keeley, senior wildlife ecologist for OSMP said in a statement about the camera project.
Keeley added: "These cameras play an important role in helping OSMP staff identify important wildlife areas. The information we collect from them is used to recommend habitat-protective measures to help protect sensitive natural areas."
Wildlife cameras, particularly those positioned near traffic-avoiding animal crossings, offer researchers rare glimpses of natural animal behavior when humans aren't obviously observing. Cameras in California contributed to the celebrity status of a beloved mountain lion dubbed P22 that roamed near Griffith Park in Los Angeles until his death in December last year.
Shannon Aulabaugh, a spokesperson for OSMP told The Washington Post animals usually walk past the camera, but this particular bear took a special interest in it.
Not much is known about the bear, Aulabaugh said, adding: "we don't know male or female as the bear did not take that kind of selfie."