How To Become A Polar Bear’s Next Meal

There are human beings on this planet who seem to be dedicated to tempting fate and putting their very life at risk. People indulge in all sorts of dangerous behavior from parachuting in a free fall starting at 23 miles above the earth to climbing Mount Everest without oxygen. They drive race cars at 230 miles an hour, attempt to set land speed records on motorcycles and ski down the sides of mountains at over 150 mph miles per hour. But no thrill seeker has anything on the guy who went one on one with a hungry female polar bear while sitting alone inside a flimsy plexiglass cage.

Wildlife photographer, Gordan Buchanan, traveled to arctic Norway to film a family of polar bears for a BBC documentary. Possessed by the desire to get up close and personal with the bears, Buchanan built a man sized plexiglass enclosure and waited inside until the 1000 pound female polar bear decided to take a stroll.

Tapped Inside the structure the intrepid explorer called his “Ice Cube,” Buchanan spent 40 minutes wondering if he would end up as a meal for his family of polar bears. The female bear tried everything she could think of to get into the cage, sniffing at gaps in the metal seams, shaking the cage back and forth and pounding on it with her giant paws.

Armed only with his camera, Gordon lived to film another day when the frustrated polar bear finally gave up and walked away. Buchanan was somewhat shaken by his experience and he seemed to be aware of how close he came to becoming a meal for a rather large and hungry bear.

As the camera fades to black, we hear a breathless Buchanan blurt out his impressions of his near death experience:

“It felt stupid, but it was incredible.”