Cute trail cam video footage catches real bear playing with teddy bears

You don’t need to go down to the woods today to be in for a big bear -related surprise. Because the surprise was caught on camera and posted to YouTube.

The wonderful footage was captured on a trail cam located outside Red Lodge, Montana. It shows what happened when a black bear came across a couple of stuffed teddy bears in a wooded area – it snuggles down with them and starts to play.

Then a second bear comes along and joins in the fun, until the first guy leaves him  to it.

The video was posted by NBC Montana who don’t provide any context beyond: "Thanks to Don Redfoot for sending us this video of a couple of bears outside of Red Lodge having some fun with stuffed animals on a game cam."

But Outdoors.com did some internet digging and found this article from Great Falls Tribune from a few years back, which reveals that Don Redfoot and his wife setup trail cameras in their backyard, and left out stuffed animals ( "a stuffed bright orange teddy bear and small lion") to see if real-life animals would interact with them as far back as 2020 at least. (Where this ranks when it comes to bear habituation , we’re not sure.)

“The toys have led to some unusual interactions that the cameras have captured,” says the article. “A bear playing and rolling atop the stuffed bear; a squirrel knocking the lion toy off a boulder in an odd king-of-the-mountain showdown; deer walking past as well as the backside of a mountain lion.”

But this footage posted by NBC is clearly date-stamped 2024, so we can only assume Don has never captured anything quite this great before and wanted to let the world see it.

• What to do if you meet a bear: our safety guide