The Dumbest Things People Do in National Parks: Taking selfies with wild bears

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Taking selfies with wild bears. In the age of smartphones and social media, photo snafus in National Parks are increasingly common. Last year during the annual salmon run near Lake Tahoe, rangers repeatedly had to warn visitors to stop taking selfies with bears. The issue has become such a problem that officials have threatened to close the area to tourists.

Rangers had even found people taking selfies with a bear cub whose mother was fishing just a few feet away, said Gay Eitel of the nearby Taylor Creek Visitor Center in an interview with Bancroft Media. “It could end very badly indeed,” she said. “We had one person say to us, ‘It’s OK, it’s a black bear, they don’t attack people.’ Needless to say, this isn’t true.”

Hand-feeding skunks. Considering how famous skunks are for their foul-smelling spray, would anybody dare to go close enough to feed them? Apparently so. Meet the National Parks skunk aficionados. Burnett has seen (and smelled) the aftermath of a skunk attack on tourists firsthand. “The results can be very unpleasant if the animal becomes agitated,” he says with characteristic understatement. (Photo: Heiko Kiera/Shutterstock)

No matter how many warnings rangers have posted, the likelihood of being sprayed doesn’t stop some visitors from trying to befriend the skunks. Burnett attributes this to the fact that skunks can seem “irresistibly cute.”

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