The famous clip of a brown bear cub scrambling up a steep, snowy slope after its mother was filmed by a drone on the Sea of Okhotsk coast in Russia. Millions shared it in November 2018 as a lesson in never giving up. Wildlife scientists saw something else: two bears that appeared frightened, moving across a dangerous slope while a drone flew close, and a fall that could easily have killed the cub. Both reactions are understandable, but only one is about the bears.
What the video shows
The footage opens on a mother brown bear crossing a sheer snowfield, with her small cub struggling behind. The cub slips, slides, digs in its claws and tries again. Near the top, as the camera moves in, the mother turns and swipes, the cub loses its grip and slides a long way down. It then climbs the whole slope again, reaches the crest and the pair disappear over the ridge.
The clip was credited to Russian videographer Dmitry Kedrov, who flew the drone that summer. It circulated through a viral-video licensing channel on YouTube before Canadian science journalist Ziya Tong posted it on Twitter in early November 2018, where it was shared hundreds of thousands of times.
Why it went viral as a lesson in persistence
The appeal is obvious. A tiny animal fails, again and again, against a huge white wall, and finally succeeds. It fits the old proverb about trying, trying again so neatly that people from business leaders to athletes used it as a Monday motivation post. Indian industrialist Anand Mahindra even suggested the mother had pushed the cub back on purpose to build its willpower.
The best MondayMorning video. That little bear just didn’t give up. I’ll now start this week-and every week-with that spirit. Also a lesson in child-rearing; If I’m not wrong, the mother bear actually made the cub slip down again & try harder, so as to build his willpower.. pic.twitter.com/9kaQU7wIkI
— anand mahindra (@anandmahindra) November 5, 2018
What a great motivational video @anandmahindra Sir! Truly applicable to us as sportspersons.
— IamKedar (@JadhavKedar) November 5, 2018
Nature's one of the most motivational clippings,🙏
— Subba Rao🇮🇳🇮🇳 (@yessirtns) November 5, 2018
Excellent attitude both by the mother & the kid bear 👏👏
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The ugly truth behind the viral video of a baby bear struggling to reach his mum on a clifftop. pic.twitter.com/KCcxETR19O
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) November 8, 2018
Harassing wildlife for a photograph, a selfie, or a video is never okay. Respect animals by giving them space, and don’t share posts where animals are clearly in distress or in danger just because someone wanted to go viral.
— Dr. Jacquelyn Gill (@JacquelynGill) November 4, 2018
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Within days the mood shifted. Al Jazeera and other outlets ran segments on the less cheerful side of the clip, and researchers who study bears and drones explained what they thought was happening.
What wildlife experts saw instead
Clayton Lamb, then a University of Alberta researcher studying grizzly bears, told CBC that the mother likely led her cub across the slope because the pair were trying to get away from the drone, and that a cub taking such a fall could have been badly injured. He read the mother's swipe near the top as a reaction to the approaching drone, possibly an attempt to knock her cub away from what she saw as a threat.
Wildlife ecologist Sophie Gilbert of Idaho State University, quoted by National Geographic, pointed out that the mother repeatedly looked straight at the drone and that her behaviour looked like fear. Dani Rabaiotti of the Zoological Society of London put it more bluntly to Smithsonian magazine:
The drone operator "could have killed the cub." (Dani Rabaiotti, Zoological Society of London, via Smithsonian)
Kedrov disputed this. He told the Russian news site Lenta.ru that the close-up effect was added with zoom in editing and that the bears had already slipped several times before he began filming. Without flight logs, nobody outside can measure exactly how close the drone was. What experts agree on is that the animals' behaviour, not a number in metres, is the best sign of whether they felt threatened.
What research says about drones and wildlife
The concern is backed by data. In a 2015 study in Minnesota, Mark Ditmer and colleagues fitted wild American black bears with heart monitors and then flew drones near them. Heart rates jumped sharply, in one case from about 41 to 162 beats per minute, even when the bears showed little visible reaction. A bear in a winter den also reacted to a drone passing overhead. Ditmer described the findings as:
"a cautionary tale" (Mark Ditmer, quoted by Smithsonian)
The lesson is that an animal that looks calm on camera may still be stressed, and one that is visibly fleeing is very likely stressed indeed. To many wild animals, a buzzing drone is an unfamiliar flying object, closer to a predator than a curiosity.
In 2016, a team of researchers published a code of practice for using drones around wildlife in the journal Current Biology, summarised in The Conversation. Its core advice: choose equipment that disturbs animals as little as possible, avoid sudden movements and threatening approach paths, follow aviation rules, and when evidence is lacking, assume harm is possible and hold back.
Did the mother really teach the cub a lesson?
It is a nice thought, but nothing in the clip shows it. Bears do teach their cubs a great deal by example, from where to find food to how to avoid danger, and cubs stay with their mothers for a year or two or more. But deliberately knocking a cub down a cliff to build character is a human story laid over animal behaviour.
When you watch a clip like this, it helps to separate what you can see from what the caption tells you. A cub climbing, a camera approaching, a fall and a reunion are observations. A planned life lesson is an interpretation, and so, to be fair, is any single explanation of the mother's swipe. Keeping the two apart makes for a more honest reading of the footage and keeps the animals at the centre of their own story.
How to film or share wildlife responsibly
Drones can be brilliant tools for science and conservation when used with care. If you fly one, or simply share wildlife videos online, a few habits help:
- Know the rules. Many national parks and protected areas ban or restrict drones. Check before you fly.
- Keep your distance and height. Start far away, approach slowly, and never fly directly at an animal or chase it.
- Watch the animal, not the screen. If it stops feeding, stares at the drone, flees or changes direction, back off at once.
- Be extra careful with young animals and nests. Parents defending offspring may take dangerous risks.
- Think before you share. If a clip shows an animal in obvious distress for the sake of a shot, sharing it rewards the behaviour. Look for footage from sources that explain how it was filmed.
The bear cub's climb is still remarkable. It just tells a different story than the one that went viral: about resilience in a wild animal, and about how easily our cameras can become part of the danger.
Sources: Smithsonian: Why experts are troubled by the viral video of a baby bear's mountain climb; CBC As It Happens: Drone caused bears distress in viral video, researchers say; The Conversation: A guide to using drones to study wildlife; video by Dmitry Kedrov; embedded posts as credited.
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