Three people in Japan were killed by bears in a single week, including one man who was collecting mushrooms in a forest and another who was decapitated while being mauled.
Police in the country’s Iwate Prefecture told AFP that a man in his 70s was reported missing after going rummaging in the woods. On Friday, October 10, police say he was discovered deceased.
“We suspect he was attacked by a bear based on scratch marks,” an official stated of the old man’s death.
In a separate incident on Wednesday, police said they discovered a man dead, apparently attacked by a bear in another region of the prefecture. According to local news site TV Iwate, the man’s head and torso were separated.
Meanwhile, a 78-year-old man was discovered dead on Saturday in Nagano Prefecture, with several claw marks on his body. Police told AFP that, while they assume a bear attack was to blame, the man’s death is still being investigated.
Japan is home to two types of bears: Asian black bears and Ussuri brown bears. Brown bears can weigh up to 1,210 pounds and are primarily vegetarians, yet they have been known to destroy any animals they meet in their natural surroundings. Asian black bears can weigh up to 440 pounds and are omnivorous, including insects, fruit, nuts, small mammals, and birds.
Japan has seen an upsurge in wild bear assaults and encounters in recent years, owing to variables such as climate change and population declines in some regions.
Between April and September of this year, 103 people were injured by bears across the country, according to the Environment Ministry. Since April, at least six people have died, and with three suspected bear attacks in the last week, the agency may publish a record number of fatalities.
Last week, one of the most public bear occurrences occurred, when the animal entered a shop and injured two people.
According to the Gunma Prefectural Government Office, the supermarket attack occurred at 7:30 p.m. local time on Tuesday, October 7, in Numata City.
“A bear entered a supermarket, injuring one man, and another man was attacked and injured by the bear when he noticed the bear at the entrance and tried to escape,” according to officials.
According to Japanese network NHK, the bear charged through the supermarket’s seafood and sushi sections, injuring the two men but not seriously.
According to NHK and United Press International, there were approximately 40 individuals inside the supermarket at the time of the attack.
“It appeared to me that the bear was bewildered. It remained in the store for 10 to 15 minutes. “It didn’t look like it was foraging,” a store manager told the news agency, citing Japan Wire.
CNN said that the bear fled while customers were evacuated.
In August, a body was discovered on a mountain in the Hokkaido prefecture belonging to a missing hiker who had been attacked by a brown bear.
