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Brown bear in the Romanian Carpathians (icon image)
Photo: Nagy Melinda / robertharding / imago images
A female brown bear attacked and injured two men on a Slovakian forest trail.
This is reported by several media.
One of the two hikers was flown by helicopter to a hospital "in a very serious condition," said the administrative director of the Polana nature reserve, Vladimira Fabriciusova.
She described the injuries to the news portal "Sme.sk" drastically: "He no longer has a face." The man was also badly damaged on the rest of his body.
His companion suffered bite wounds and severe shock.
The slightly injured reported to the authorities that the two men had unexpectedly seen a bear cub a few meters in front of them on Wednesday evening, and the next moment the mother bear pounced on them.
At first he himself fled.
When he started to take care of his seriously injured comrade, the bear unexpectedly returned and attacked him too.
If bears notice people in time, they usually avoid them before they are even seen.
However, if they feel threatened or their young are threatened, they can also attack.
A total of 17,000 brown bears in Europe
Experts have repeatedly pointed out that such clashes have become more frequent in recent years.
This is not least due to the misconduct of tourists who, on the hunt for a bear photo, deliberately lured the animals with food, whereupon they shed their natural shyness and approached people more and more often.
According to the last official census of the state nature conservation in 2016, more than 1200 wild brown bears live in Slovakia.
According to the environmental organization WWF, there are a total of 17,000 brown bears in Europe, most of them live in the Carpathians, with smaller populations in the Alps, Scandinavia and southern Europe.
bam/dpa