Tag: polar bears

historicaltimes:

Nikolai Machulyak, feeding a polar bear and his cubs with condensed milk, 1976. .

via reddit

From one comment there:

I was always wondering if this ended up being a bad day for the guy, the bears or all of them. Now… I still don’t know 🙂

Edit: So I got pissed off with myself for not knowing and googled it. Turns out, it was explained on reddit some time ago /r/OldSchoolCool/comments/2vrqun/astonishing_photo_showing_a_man_feeding_a_polar/

“Briefly, the man’s name is Nikolai Machulyak, and the mama bear is "Mariya Mikhailovna”. He spent at least a few months feeding the half-starved bear and her cubs before that picture was taken (in 1976). And she was not the first polar bear he supported – before, it was “Masha”, whom he fed since she was abandoned as adolescent. Actually, Mariya Mikhailovna kicked Masha out of her lair. Then, since M.M. was in worse shape and had cubs, Nikolai just proceeded to feed her and cubs in lieu of Masha.“