Incidentally, this same fear has also inspired great respect, as such, a great way to raise the credentials of any badass, villain, or Anti-Hero if you give them a bear. The English word 'bear' originally meant 'brown one', and the Slavic word medved originally meant 'honey eater.' Even the original Proto-Indo-European word was related to the word for 'destruction', proving just how ancient this particular Primal Fear is.
This adds to their unpredictability as to how a bear reacts to a certain situation will entirely depend on both the bear itself and the mood it's in at the time.īears have such a long history of scaring the Pooh out of human beings that most of the names we've ever given them are derived from conciliatory euphemisms, as part of an old taboo against naming something so dangerous. Another issue is that bears are very intelligent (often regarded as being very close to chimpanzees) and they actually have individual personalities.
