Three-year-old Casey Hathaway said a bear helped him survive two nights in the woods but animal experts say it would be a first

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

The story of a three-year-old boy who said he survived two nights alone in the woods due to the assistance of a friendly bear should not encourage people to seek out their own relationships with bears, a leading ursine expert has warned.

Three-year-old boy missing in woods for two days says friendly bear kept him safe Read more

Last week, rescuers in North Carolina found three-year-old Casey Hathaway crying but safe, entangled in a patch of thorny bushes, having been missing in a wooded area in freezing conditions for two nights.

Casey told police he survived due to the presence of a black bear, which kept him company. The boy repeated the story to his aunt, Breanna Hathaway.

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“He said he hung out with a bear for two days,” Hathaway wrote in a Facebook post. “God sent him a friend to keep him safe. God is a good God. Miracles do happen.”

This seemingly remarkable tale of Jungle Book-style inter-species friendship was most likely the product of Casey’s imagination, however, according to one veteran bear expert.

“I’ve never known such a thing to happen, bears don’t do that,” said Chris Servheen, a bear researcher at the University of Montana.

“Wild bears aren’t friends with people. I don’t want to say he’s not telling the truth, he obviously thinks he’s seen things and maybe he’s got a teddy bear at home. But I’ve seen no evidence anything like that has ever happened.”

There are examples of apparent bear-human comradeship, although they typically involve captive bears that have been raised by human handlers. For example, in 2016 a video was taken of Jimbo, a bear that stands 10ft on its hind legs, cuddling Jim Kowalczik, director of a New York wildlife centre, and allowing Kowalczik to administer a back rub.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Casey Hathaway was missing for two days.

Photograph: AP

A wild bear is a very different proposition, however, due to a natural aversion to dealing with humans. Bears that break into homes or attack people are usually killed themselves. With a sense of smell around seven times stronger than a bloodhound’s, a bear would have smelled Casey long before seeing him and would most likely have then left the scene.

“Bears are by and large afraid of people no matter how big the person is,” Servheen said. “Bears that move towards people don’t survive long, so they get selected out. The only reason it would go near the child would be to be predatory, although black bears are very rarely predatory of humans and obviously that didn’t happen here.

“In a situation where a bear is raised by a human they can become very tame, just like a dog. But a wild bear is very different.

“I don’t want to cast aspersions on the child but I think the little boy had a fantasy. The bear wouldn’t feel sorry for him, thinking he’s alone. That’s ascribing human characteristics on wild animals, which is anthropomorphism.

“But if the boy felt comfortable under the watch of a wild animal that’s fine. Whatever helped him get through it.”