Surely it would be easier to be carried off by an actual bear, or some other animal, and to be impregnated by him, than by some incorporeal demon without bodily members.
—Thomas Bartholin, 1661§
Haida bear totem
Caution: Although this cross has been repeatedly alleged, from ancient times right up to the present, there seems to be very little evidence that it ever actually occurs.
Many aboriginal cultures, both in northern Eurasia and North America, embraced the idea that bears can interbreed with human beings, a belief that apparently played a role in shamanic ritual long before the advent of writing. The people of these northern cultures took bears as their totems and practiced bear worship. Indeed, some continue this practice even today, just as it has been handed down from paleolithic times. As Edward Tyrrell Leith puts it in his book The Dog in Myth and Custom
The Bear and the Wolf are, according to the belief of the American Indians, children and consorts of the first woman, and in both forms the Great Spirit is conceived as embodied.
The Haida people, native to southern Alaska and northern British Columbia, are a surviving example of this tradition. Their choice of the bear as a totem reflects a story of a Haida maiden who was so foolish as to laugh at the bears. Incensed at this outrage, a great pack of bears suddenly appears and kills all her companions. The chief bear then takes her away and makes her his mate. They have a daughter, half human and half bear. And later, when the daughter grows up, a hunting party from the tribe corners her in a tree, thinking she is an ordinary bear. But when they realize she is part human, they persuade her to come down and live among them. And now, according to Haida legend, this primal bear-human goddess is the ancestor of all those entitled to wear the bear crest.
In the Korean legend of Dan Gun, the progenitor of the Korean people, the god Hwan-in sends his son, Hwan-ung to establish a new kingdom at Tae Baek Mountain in what is now North Korea. There he meets a tiger and a bear who want to become human. So he gives them wormwood and garlic to eat and tells them to stay in a cave out of the sunlight for 100 days. The tiger could not remain there, but the bear did and became a woman. Hwan-ung then married her, and Dan Gun was their child.
Such stories are widespread. In Eurasia, Russian fable tells of a woman who enters a bear’s den, has sex with him and later gives birth to a son. She names him Ivanko-Medviedko, meaning “Little John, the son of the bear.” Human down to the waist, he has the lower extremities of a bear, much as satyrs are human above and goat below.
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Dabbabi, the half-man half-bear, a not very bearish bear-human hybrid, as pictured in a 13th century bestiary by Zakariya al-Qazwini (Walters MS 659).
“‘Well, mind and hold tight by my shaggy coat, and then there’s nothing to fear,’ said the Bear, so she rode a long, long way.”
Illustration by Kay Nielsen East of the Sun and West of the Moon (1914)
And there are also many tales of women running away with bears and marrying them. For example, in the Norwegian folktale East of the Sun and West of the Moon a great White Bear comes one night to the father of an impoverished family and greets him.
“Good-evening to you!” said the White Bear.
“The same to you!” said the man.
“Will you give me your youngest daughter? If you will, I’ll make you as rich as you are now poor,” said the Bear.
At first the man hesitates, but in the end he talks his daughter into going away with the bear. She goes to live with him in a beautiful palace and, of course, he turns out to be a prince and not a bear at all.
The ancient Greeks and Romans, too, told tales about women mating with bears. According to Lemprière’s Classical Dictionary, Polyphonta, one of Diana’s nymphs, “devoted herself to celibacy and to a retired life, with such constancy, that
Venus, irritated at the contempt she showed her divinity, inspired her with an unnatural passion for a bear, which the unfortunate nymph is said to have gratified. This was no sooner known, than she was detested by Diana, and pursued by all the wild beasts of the forest, but she escaped to her father’s house, where she brought forth twins, to whom she gave the names of Oreius and Agrius.
Juno transforming Calisto into a bear.
Conrad Gesner
These paleolithic notions remained current even during the European Renaissance. Rabelais had his vast protagonist Pantagruel born “hairy as a bear.” And tales of bears carrying women away found their place in early scientific literature. Dodds (2006) compiled various early accounts of this sort. In his Historium Animalium the zoologist Conrad Gesner (1516–1565) says, “A bear, who came down from the alps of the Haute-Savoie, carried
a girl off to his cavern lair and there raped her. Each day, he gathered fruits and herbs, and brought them back for her to eat. And while away he would block the mouth of the cave with a stone to prevent her escaping. Eventually, however, when her parents after long search found his den, they were able to push the rock aside and rescue her. [Translated by E. M. McCarthy. Original Latin.]
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Woodcut from History of the Northern Peoples (1555, p. 627; ||yyuwh68j), by Olaus Magnus, the last archbishop of Sweden, who gave a supposedly historical account of a girl raped by a bear. According to the story, their shaggy son, Ulsonis, went on to found the royal lines of Denmark and Sweden.
And the Alsatian humanist and encyclopedist Conrad Lycosthenes (1518-1561) reported that at Rome in the year 1282, a woman gave birth to a child with a human head, but the claws and shaggy coat of a bear (See: Prodigiorum ac Ostentorum Chronicon, p. 445, Basileae, 1557). As a result, supposedly, the Pope, Martin IV, immediately ordered the destruction of every picture of a bear in the city (it was thought that the birth resulted from the mother looking at pictures of bears during her pregnancy).†
† This may be the same alleged event mentioned by the Sicilian physician Fortunato Fedeli (De Relationes Medicorum, 1654, p. 499), who mentions in passing that “In Italy, of course, a woman, impregnated by a bear, gave birth to a son who had not only a superior nature, but who also went on to found a noble family” (Translated by E. M. McCarthy, Original Latin).
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Edward Topsell's woodcut illustration of a bear-human hybrid that he called “Arctopithecus” (source: The History of Four-Footed Beasts and Serpents, 1658).
The German physician Johann Joachim Becher (1635-1682), in his Physicae subterraneae (1669, II, p. 242), says that “There are various stories, too, of bears and monkeys coupling with
women, and the seed of those beasts, instead of forming the ordinary human figure, produces shagginess and extreme strength. [Translated by E. M. McCarthy. Original Latin.]
Bear suckling a child (from: The History of Poland, Bernard Connor, 1697)
An old report about a Norwegian boy who supposedly had a pelt exactly like that of a bear (source: Bartholin 1661, vol. 5, p. 41).
And Bernard Connor (1699, pp. 133-134), a Fellow of the Royal Society who served as personal physician to King John III Sobieski, writes that “Recently, in 1694, at the court of the now deceased king of Poland, John Sobieski,
there was a wild boy who had been living with bears when he was captured by woodsmen somewhere in the neighboring confines of Lithuania and Russia. About ten years old, his skin covered with hair, he was frightful to see. He had neither reason nor speech, nor even human voice, and he went about on all fours. Indeed, he had nothing in common with human beings except the mere form of his naked body.
Given that he resembled a human being, at least in appearance, he was baptized. But, separated now from his beast companions, he seemed unhappy, for he was fearful and would try to run away, as if he were imprisoned. Eventually, by placing his hands against the wall, he was taught to stand, in the same way that infants are, and, as he gradually became accustomed to human food, he grew more tame. After a long time he was able to speak a few words with a hoarse, inhuman voice. But even then, when asked about his former life in the forest, he could remember no more about it than we do of our days in the cradle.
The king himself, numerous senators and many other trustworthy people have assured me of these facts. And it is in fact widely believed in Poland that human beings are sometimes reared by bears. For they say there that if parents leave their babies close to the forest, or too near the fence, or carelessly out in a field, they may be devoured by a hungry bear, but that a lactating she-bear may carry the child away and raise it among bears.* And then, after a few years the child may be caught again by hunters.
* Whether a lactating bear might abduct and raise a child is unknown. It is, however, well established that various other kinds of mammals, while in lactation, will make strange adoptive choices. Thus, lactating cats have adopted and raised rats, squirrels, skunks, chickens and ducklings.
More about the Polish bear-boy
A pamphlet published in Paris in 1727 (Relation véritable d’un enfant monstrueux qui fut trouvé dans des bois [...] Pologne parmi des ours, avec qui il vivait, qui fut baptisé après qu’il eut été reconnu pour homme, qui a eu pour parrain et marraine la reine de Pologne et l’ambassadeur de France) gave the following account of the Polish bear-boy (translated from the original French by E. M. McCarthy).
A True Account of a monstrous Child who was found in the woods of Poland in the company of some bears with whom he lived, who was baptized after he was recognized as a human being, and who was adopted by the Queen of Poland and the Ambassador of France.
Joseph Ursin, a monstrous child, was found by hunters in the Lithuanian forests of Poland where he lived among the bears. The hunters, in seeking their prey, saw a troop of bears, among whom they perceived what appeared to be two children. The hunters pursued these children so closely that they were able to capture one of them despite the resistance he made, crying out, baring his teeth, and scratching with his nails like a wild cub. They tied him and brought him before the King and Queen of Poland. All the nobility and the whole town hurried to see him. He appeared to be no more than nine years old. His skin was very pale, his limbs well proportioned and full of strength. His face was handsome, but his expressions were brutish, and he was so devoid of spirit and reason that he seemed to have nothing in common with a human being but his body. He could not speak and all his inclinations were entirely bestial. He was, however, recognized as a human being and was therefore baptized by the bishop of Poznań and named Joseph. The Queen of Poland became his foster mother and the Ambassador of France, his foster father. But scarcely any progress was made in taming him or in teaching him the principles of religion for he never could be taught to speak, though there was nothing wrong with his tongue. Still, one could tell that the time was not entirely wasted, because when anyone spoke of God, he lifted his hands and eyes to the heavens. The king gave him to a Polish noble, who took him into his house as a servant, but he never lost the natural ferocity he had learned from the beasts. It was noticed that one day a bear who had killed two men, approached him without doing him the least harm, and on the contrary it is claimed that the bear licked his face and hands.
In India, where even today human beings occasionally marry animals (see video below), women are represented, on the walls of temples and in pictures, mating with various creatures, including bears. For example, the image at right, from Kotah State and dating to the eighteenth century, depicts a woman coupling with a sloth bear (Melursus ursinus), India’s native ursid.
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Video: A Hindu woman marries a stray dog.
And even here in the United States, newspapers have told tales of ursine abductions. Thus, the Brownsville Daily Herald, (May 17, 1901, p. 2, col. 1) printed an account of a young woman in Texas being carried away by a bear-human hybrid. It reads as follows: “A paper published in San Francisco tells a marvelous bogey story of
a half-human half-bear creature which caught a beautiful Texas girl, the belle of Marble Falls society, when she went out to gather her herd of sheep at night and carried her to a cave. The beautiful belle was rescued, and a posse of her admirers shot the bogey as it charged on them. This is vouched for an actual fact. No wonder New York, St. Louis, Chicago and other cities are sending delegations to investigate the resources of a state which produces such wonderful animals and such accomplished society ladies.
And another Texas newspaper, the Fort Worth Daily Gazette, from (Aug. 3, 1889, p. 2, col. 5) reported a half-bear, half-human “child” birthed by a woman near Camden, Tennessee, a town about halfway between Nashville and Memphis. The title of the story was “HALF HUMAN, HALF BEAR. Fright Produces a Hideous Monstrosity, Brought Forth by a Young Woman in Childbirth.” This account, which harks back to shamanic times, apparently was printed in newspapers across the country (the same story appears, for example, on the front page of the Pittsburg Dispatch on July 31, 1889). It reads as follows:
CAMDEN, TENN., July 30.—A young white woman near here recently gave birth to a half human and half bear, the resemblance to the latter predominating.
The eyes are prominent and set far back in the crown of the head. A human nose in faint outline is seen in the center of the head. A prominent snout projects where the face should be, and from this a long tongue protrudes. The arms and legs are those of [a] human, but the feet and hands are those of an animal, except that the fingers and toes are perfectly those of a human. The creature was still-born. Some months ago the mother was greatly frightened by a pet bear.
The last sentence of the news report just quoted refers to the old idea that a pregnant mother being frightened by an animal can result in her later giving birth to a child who resembles that animal, a notion that dates back at least to medieval times. The idea that fright by an animal can impress features of that animal on the unborn is, however, an undocumented phenomenon. Thus, for the allegations made in the last quoted article, only three explanations are available to a modern mind: (1) the report is simply a fabrication or report of a false rumor; (2) it is a sensationalistic exaggeration of certain bearlike features that occurred in a mutant, but non-hybrid, infant; or (3) a very rare and strange hybrid was sired by a pet bear somewhere near Camden, Tennessee in 1889. Of course, on the basis of the information offered here, there is really no way to know which of these three possibilities is correct.
News notice about the arrival of a bear-human (Bennington, Vermont, Banner, Sep. 25, 1884, p. 3, col. 5).
News notice about a bear-human on exhibit at a hotel in Geneseo (Buffalo, New York, Evening Telegraph, Apr. 24, 1885, p. 2, col. 2; ||yyt27mxk).
The next news report suggests that the shamanic notions of native Americans may be correct. It appeared in the Seattle Times-Intelligencer (Sep. 20, 1887, p. 3, col. 5):
A Bear Human
IT LOOKS LIKE A BEAR, CRAWLS LIKE A BEAR AND ACTS LIKE A BEAR
A large party of Clayoquot Indians, from British Columbia, appeared in this city yesterday on their way to the hop fields. Accompanying them is probably as curious a specimen of unfortunate humanity as ever was born. It is neither a man, nor a brute, but appears to be on the line dividing the one from the other. Considered as a human being, the being is a man; considered as a brute, it is a bear. It looks but little more like a man than a monkey does, except that the features are a little more distinct and there is not a coat of hair on his body. It cannot talk or walk upright. It crawls along on the hands and feet with the peculiar swinging motion of the bear. Its feet are at a very acute angle with the front of the leg and when crawling the hands move with an inward swing like the front feet of a bear. The expression is almost that of a bear. There is a peculiarly wild look about it, and the eyes are restless and sharp. Everybody instinctively calls it "Indian Bear."
The Indians said they seldom take it along with them anywhere, but this time there was no one to stay with it. They say it is 20 years old. But little attention appears to be paid to it by the Indians, and it wobbles around with about the aimlessness of an old dog, seeking a warm place, and eyeing suspiciously the approach of anyone not familiar with it. The Indians say that a short time before it was born, its mother was frightened by a bear.
Another news report, reproduced here, seems to refer to this same British Columbian nondescript:
News notice about a bear-human (Wichita, Kansas, Daily Eagle, Mar. 13, 1890, p. 2, col. 5)
A freak of nature in the shape of a half man and half bear was on exhibition at the Central House last Friday.
A brief notice, possibly referring to the same individual described in the preceding report, appeared in the Santa Barbara, California, Morning Press (Oct. 13, 1891, p. 1, col. 4):
The Portland Oregonian says: A monstrosity in the form of a man born like a bear was on a recent train from Roseburg to Los Angeles. He is over forty years old. His parents are much attached to their unfortunate offspring. He is an idiot.
Ad in a Chicago news paper for a big show featuring a bear-human hybrid (Chicago, Inter Ocean, Mar. 9, 1890, p. 15, col. 3; ||yywkyg74)
One other case may be worth mentioning, that of Julia Pastrana (pictured below). Born in the Mexican state of Sinoloa in 1834, Pastrana was exploited as a sideshow attraction where she was variously billed as a bear-woman or an ape-human hybrid.
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Julia Pastrana
(1834-1860)
One more case, which may in fact refer to Julia Pastrana, appears in the news item immediately below. But it still fails to free this hybrid from myth.
An account of the Durango Bear Lady from page 2 of the February 7, 1855, issue of The American Patriot, a newspaper published in Clinton, Louisiana (access source).
With certainty, one can say only that bear × human is a very poorly documented cross. Reports about matings of this sort, even without the production of hybrids, are old and smack largely of myth. Indeed, it’s difficult even to imagine how a bear might “carry a woman away.” They have paws, not hands. Sexual interaction with a pet bear, such as that implied in the Camden account, would be more plausible. The few, allegedly nonfictional reports from the late nineteenth century fall far short of establishing this cross as fact. So given available information, it seems fair to say that hybridization between humans and bears is much further from the realm of fact than are certain other crosses involving human beings. In particular, hybrids of this kind are far less well documented than are hybrids from such crosses as pig × human or cow × human, for both of which, there are many independent reports attested by many separate eyewitnesses. In both of these latter cases, it seems, given what has been reported, that there are even specimens that could perhaps be tracked down. And in both of these latter two cases cases, actual videos of putative hybrids are available. Even chicken × human has more evidence to support it than bear × human, given that at least one testable specimen is available in a known location.
Of course, there are those who seem to expect me to voice a definite opinion about whether bear-human hybrids are possible. But with regard to this cross, as with respect to any other, my goal is to present facts, not my own opinions—that is, facts about what has been reported. (I explain my motives for this policy in the introduction.)
However, even though I have nothing to say about this cross specifically, I am willing to express an opinion generally and theoretically: After looking at many thousands of different types of crosses among mammals, birds and other types of organisms, I would venture to say that, in some crosses between very disparate types of parents, it seems that fertilization does occur, but only at very low rates. That is, empirical evidence suggests that some rescue mechanism exists, allowing a percentage of such zygotes to form and develop.
In certain distant crosses complete development of hybrids does occur, but only at very low rates; a well-documented example is that of turkey × chicken, a cross where only about one insemination in a thousand produces a mature hybrid (McCarthy 2006, p. 51). But saying a cross produces hybrids at only very low rates is not at all the same as saying it never produces them. So then one must wonder what the evolutionary implications of this phenomenon might be?
“Science went up so high,” the old one says, “that now it’s beginning to come back down. We’re climbing up with our old-ways knowledge, pretty soon we’ll meet science coming down.”
—Gary Snyder, The Woman Who Married a Bear
The bear wife was remembered by human beings as a goddess under many names, and there were many stories about her children and what they did in the world.
—Gary Snyder, The Woman Who Married a Bear
Poet and environmental activist Gary Snyder (1990, pp. 163-164) expressed an assessment of bears widespread among native Americans:
Bears are so powerful and calm. At the same time, they are the closest of all animals to humans. Everybody says, “After you take a bear’s coat off, it looks just like a human.” And they act human: they fool, they teach their cubs (who are rowdy and curious), and they remember. They are confident. They will eat little trifles, or knock down a moose, with equal grace. Their claws are delicate and precise: they can pick up a nut between two tips. They make love for hours. They are grumpy after naps. They can lope a hundred miles overnight. They seem to be indestructible. They know what is happening, where to go, and how to get there. They are forgiving. They can become enraged, and when they fight it’s as if they feel no pain. They have no enemies, no fears, they can be silly, and they are big-hearted. They are completely at home in the world. They like human beings, and they decided long ago to let the humans join them at the salmon-running rivers and the berry fields.
The Roman encyclopedist Pliny the Elder, too, noted a certain similarity between humans and bears. "In man the knees and elbows bend in opposite directions," he writes, "and the same is the case with bears and the monkey tribe, which are consequently not at all swift" (Natural History, XI, CII).
§Source: Bartholin. T. 1661. Historiarum anatomicarum et medicarum rariorum,vol. 5, p. 166. Original Latin: "Certe facilior a vero Urso & animali alio raptus & impraegnatio sequerentur, quam a Daemone, excarne spiritu & corporeis membris destituto." (translated by E. M. McCarthy).
Haida bear totem
Source: Tree People, by Ritva Kovalainen and Sanni Seppo, a description of Finnish myths associated with trees and forests.
Dabbabi, the half-man half-bear, a not very bearish bear-human hybrid, as pictured in a 13th century bestiary by Zakariya al-Qazwini (
“‘Well, mind and hold tight by my shaggy coat, and then there’s nothing to fear,’ said the Bear, so she rode a long, long way.”
Illustration by Kay Nielsen East of the Sun and West of the Moon (1914)
The Roman Bear-boy
Edward Topsell's woodcut illustration of a bear-human hybrid that he called “Arctopithecus” (source: The History of Four-Footed Beasts and Serpents, 1658).
Bear suckling a child (from: The History of Poland, Bernard Connor, 1697)
News notice about the arrival of a bear-human (Bennington, Vermont, Banner, Sep. 25, 1884, p. 3, col. 5).
News notice about a bear-human on exhibit at a hotel in Geneseo (Buffalo, New York, Evening Telegraph, Apr. 24, 1885, p. 2, col. 2; ||yyt27mxk).
News notice about a bear-human (Wichita, Kansas, Daily Eagle, Mar. 13, 1890, p. 2, col. 5)
Ad in a Chicago news paper for a big show featuring a bear-human hybrid (Chicago, Inter Ocean, Mar. 9, 1890, p. 15, col. 3; ||yywkyg74)
Julia Pastrana
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