An \u201cextremely intelligent\u201d bear that injured four people in Fukushima Prefecture remains at large as of Friday after apparently unlatching a window while evading capture and turning on a water tap, officials said.<\/p>\n
A record 13 people were killed by bears in Japan last year, and there has been a jump in sightings as the animals emerge hungry from hibernation.<\/p>\n
After attacking four people at two factories in the city of Fukushima on Tuesday, the bear took shelter inside one of the buildings, local media reported.<\/p>\n
It dodged capture despite efforts by hunters and responders equipped with traps and anesthetic guns, and escaped late Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The bear remains at large as of Friday morning, a Fukushima official said.<\/p>\n
Fukushima Mayor Yuki Baba told reporters Thursday that evidence suggested the animal \u201cunlocked the window on its own\u201d to flee, adding that claw marks had been found near the exit.<\/p>\n
It is also believed the bear \u201cturned on the water tap\u201d to drink from, he added, describing it as \u201cextremely intelligent.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWith the cooperation of hunters, police and firefighters, I believe we took all possible measures available to us\u201d to catch it, Baba said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat we failed to achieve our goal despite our best efforts is extremely regrettable,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
In the last fiscal year ended March, bear sightings nationwide topped 50,000, more than double the previous record set two years earlier, according to official data.<\/p>\n
The animals were seen entering homes, roaming near schools and rampaging through supermarkets and hot spring resorts on an almost daily basis.<\/p>\n
Bears are thriving thanks in part to an abundance of food \u2014 including acorns, deer and boars \u2014 due to a warming climate, experts say.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An \u201cextremely intelligent\u201d bear that injured four people in Fukushima Prefecture remains at large as of Friday after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1007029,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3847],"tags":[933,29290,41760,70,16,15,1717],"class_list":["post-1007028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-animals","tag-bears","tag-fukushima","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-wildlife"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116697508497546033","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1007028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1007028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1007028\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1007029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1007028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1007028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1007028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}