Stepan is a Eurasian brown bear who has spent his whole life with people. Svetlana and Yuriy Panteleenko, a Russian couple living near Moscow, took him in at about three months old and raised him in their home. By 2016, when photos of the family went around the world, Stepan was 23 years old, weighed well over 130 kilograms and was still sharing the sofa, the dinner table and the garden with them.
Accounts of how he came to the family differ. Reports from 2016 said hunters found the cub alone and weak in a forest after his mother was killed; a later profile in The Moscow Times said he was born in a St Petersburg zoo and abandoned by his mother. Either way, the couple nursed him through his first months and he never returned to the wild.
Stepan went on to a long career in Russian film, circus work and photoshoots. The pictures below show his everyday life with the Panteleenkos, with a few notes on what bears actually need and why most experts warn against treating them as pets.
Stepan with his adoptive family in one of the 2016 photos that introduced him to readers outside Russia.
An orphaned cub finds a home
Svetlana offers Stepan a cup of tea at the kitchen table while Yuriy eats beside them. The couple had no children of their own and have described Stepan as a member of the family. A cub this young would normally stay with its mother for well over a year, learning where to find food and how to den.
Stepan wraps a huge paw around Yuriy on the leather sofa. In the wild, a three-month-old brown bear cub weighs only a few kilograms and depends on its mother's milk, so an orphan of that age needs frequent feeding and warmth to survive.
Svetlana hugs Stepan in the yard as he sits back on his haunches. Hand-raising from such an early age is the main reason he is so relaxed with his keepers: he has known human touch since before he could forage for himself.
A gentle giant at home
The couple's front room clearly belongs to the bear as much as to them. By 2016 Stepan was an adult male, roughly two metres tall when standing, yet he settles on the sofa between his people as if it were his own bed.
Yuriy and Svetlana press their faces against Stepan's fur. Svetlana told reporters that he loves people and is not aggressive, and the couple said they had never been bitten. That calm temperament comes from years of care and training, not from anything typical of wild bears.
This time the humans lean on the bear. Brown bears are intelligent and curious, and a captive bear needs company and constant stimulation to avoid boredom and stress.
Yuriy reads aloud while Stepan peers at the page. Pictures like this are posed for the camera, but they also show how comfortable he is with close contact after more than two decades with the same people.
Mealtimes and tea
A picnic on the lawn, with the family dog keeping its distance. Reports in 2016 said Stepan ate about 25 kilograms of fish, vegetables and eggs a day, and Good News Network added that his favourite treat was sweetened condensed milk. Wild brown bears are far less carnivorous than their reputation suggests: plants can supply up to 90 percent of their food energy.
Stepan sips from a cup held by Svetlana. Sweet rewards are common in bear training, and his trainers reportedly used cookies and cheese to coax him into poses for photographers. Diet is one of the hardest parts of keeping a bear healthy in captivity, since too much sugar harms bears as it does people.
Football, television and gardening
Stepan plays with a ball in a field near the house. Football was said to be his favourite game and his main exercise. A bear of his size needs space to move: in the wild, brown bears can walk many kilometres a day in search of food.
Evening television, seen from behind the sofa. Brown bears in cold climates usually slow down and den through winter, and captive bears often show a similar seasonal drop in appetite and activity, which suits quiet evenings indoors.
Stepan holds a watering can while Yuriy works the flowerbeds. Watering the plants was one of the tricks that made him famous. Like his circus routines, it is a trained behaviour built on patience and rewards.
Stepan on video
This video gathers footage of Stepan at home with the Panteleenkos, including the scenes at the table and in the garden.
From family pet to film and photo star
Stepan was trained for film and circus work and appeared in more than a dozen productions, according to a Vice report on his photoshoots. He later became the centrepiece of staged photoshoots, first with photographer Olga Barantseva, who presented her work as a message against hunting, and later with Mila Zhdanova. In October 2020 The Moscow Times described him as a 28-year-old bear weighing around 318 kilograms and posing with models in traditional Russian costumes for fairy-tale-inspired pictures. Zhdanova said her sessions lasted no more than 30 minutes and called him "smart, kind and incredibly beautiful".
That age is remarkable. Wild brown bears usually live 20 to 30 years, while captive bears can live considerably longer, so Stepan had already passed the typical lifespan of his wild relatives.
Should anyone keep a bear?
Stepan's story is heart-warming, but it is not a model to copy. Animal rights campaigners have criticised the family for using him in paid appearances and for denying him a natural life, and online commenters accused them of taking a cub that belonged in the wild. Even a hand-raised bear remains a very strong wild animal, and incidents involving captive bears around the world show how quickly play can turn dangerous.
Orphaned cubs today are usually placed with specialist rehabilitation centres, which keep human contact to a minimum so the bears can be released back into the forest. If you ever find a cub alone, the safest choice is to leave it, watch from a distance in case the mother returns, and call local wildlife authorities.
Sources: Photos via Bored Panda (2016), originally reported by the Daily Mail; Stepan's site: medvedstepan.ru. The Moscow Times: Russian bear model steals the spotlight (12 October 2020); Good News Network (2018); Vice: the story behind the bear photoshoots; Wikipedia: Brown bear.
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