No paparazzi!
A black bear family of four with a vendetta against technology has been ripping down trail cameras mounted across a Minnesota park.
The mama bear and her three cubs have messed with trail cameras at a remote beaver pond at Minnesota’s Voyageurs National Park on at least five separate occasions throughout the past year, researchers said.
“This mama bear has trained her 3 cubs to be weapons of mass camera destruction that will terrorize any trail camera found in the woods for years to come,” the Voyageurs Wolf Project, a research team at the University of Minnesota that studies wolves, said in a statement.
Adorable footage shows the mama bear beelining toward the cameras with her babies in tow.
The foursome can be heard sniffing the foreign object — with only their thick fur and their small bear ears visible on the screen — before the footage starts shaking and cuts out.
The family returned to the scene of the crime at a later date to take down the camera once again after noticing it was replaced.
This time, they can be seen heading right for the equipment — but with better knowledge of how to take down the camera.
“Now, you might be tempted to think ‘They just look so cute and sweet and innocent!’ But don’t be fooled. These are highly-trained deviants prowling the woods in search of technology to destroy,” the Voyageurs Wolf Project said.
The project has more than 200 trail cameras set up throughout the 350-square-mile park, located in northern Minnesota, near the Canadian border.
The footage is intended to study the 16 packs of wolves that call Voyageurs National Park home, but frequently capture the ire of black bears patrolling the meadows.
“Most of the time, they just knock the cameras around for a bit and then move on,” Thomas Gable, project lead at the Voyageurs Wolf Project, told Insider.
“That said, we have had many trail cameras that bears have completely destroyed by chewing on them.”
The bear family of four, however, appears to be on a clear mission to dismantle the cameras whenever they spot them in the wild.
“And someday these cubs will have cubs of their own and the desire to inflict chaos and carnage on cameras will be passed on to the next generation. And so on and so forth. And a day will come when no camera will be safe in the woods,” the Voyageurs Wolf Project said.
