In a surprising turn of events, a grizzly bear has accidentally become a wildlife photographer. This extraordinary incident took place at the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center in West Yellowstone, Montana.
Filmmaker Tom Scott was shooting a video about bear-resistant trash cans when one of his GoPros was swiped by a curious bear. Unaware of the mischief to come, Scott watched as the bear carried the camera to a nearby pond, where it played with it before leaving it submerged in the water.
Scott presumed that was the end of the story, considering the drained battery and the camera’s abrupt shutdown due to overheating. However, the bear had other plans. Five hours later, it returned to the pond, retrieved the GoPro, miraculously turned it back on, and recorded a few minutes of bear selfies.
Amazed by the situation, Scott wasn’t aware that the spectacle wasn’t over yet. Four hours after the bear’s second visit, another bear stumbled upon the camera, switched it on, and recorded a short snippet of footage just before the battery died again.
Upon reviewing the footage, Scott exclaimed, “[The bear] somehow managed to press the shutter button before dropping it back in the pond.” He admitted that those final shots, captured by the bears themselves, were created accidentally and excluded any involvement from him.
While Scott initially thought about monetizing the rare bear-captured content, he acknowledged that he did not possess copyright ownership for those particular shots. Convinced that they belonged in the public domain, he uploaded the raw video files to the internet archive as a free download for everyone, crediting it to “Grizzly bears.”
Although Scott’s decision may seem straightforward, the issue of copyright ownership is more complex. It echoes the famous monkey selfie case, where a court ruled that animals cannot file copyright infringement lawsuits under U.S. copyright law.
Despite the camera being chewed by one of the grizzly bears, the GoPro surprisingly survived, albeit with a cracked screen.
