The Drudge Report issued a siren GIF for its report that, “The new movie Revenant features a shocking scene of a wild bear raping Leo DiCaprio!” The Drudge Report is a conservative page of links to mostly political news stories, so the focus on the film is somewhat unusual, as is the story’s tone. “Some in the audience escaped to the exits when the Wolf of Wall Street met the Grizzly of Yellowstone,” the site says. “The bear flips Leo over and thrusts and thrusts during the explicit mauling.” (Update: Fox says there is no rape scene!)
My first thought was, “Wow, the Drudge Report is really weird.” My second thought was, “I wonder if bears really do that.” Turns out I’m not alone. My search for the answer did not teach me much about bears, but I did learn a lot about humanity. First, that humans do not want to be the only sentient beings.
Humans often wonder whether animals are like us in the good ways. But they also want to know if they are like us in the bad ways.
This is an issue about which there are many questions but not a lot of good Yahoo Answers.
Wikipedia has a helpful rundown of sexual coercion in the animal kingdom. Yes, some bears use sexual coercion. This appears to vary not by species but by social status. Read all about it in this telling bit of anthropomorphism from the book The Myth of Monogamy: Fidelity and Infidelity in Animals and People:
