Web cam in Alaska park captures two mysterious bear deaths
By Steve Quinn JUNEAU, Alaska (Reuters) - 'National Park Service officials are investigating the unexplained deaths of two brown bears in Alaska, one of them a cub, captured in real time by a video camera as thousands of bewildered nature enthusiasts were watching on the Internet. The camera, trained on the Brooks Falls area in the Katmai National Park, typically shows a variety of live-action bear activity, such as bears snoozing on a riverbank or snatching leaping salmon while perched above a waterfall. In late October, a brown bear cub could be seen by thousands of viewers walking in front of the camera before the animal teetered, then fell over and died, drawing a torrent of online comments from those tuned into the livestream carried on the park's website and second site called explore.org (http://bit.ly/1l4L7WY). The viewer reaction, ranging from expressions of grief to scientific observations, provided park officials with a running commentary on the sequence of events as they began to investigate what happened. Some time after park officials had removed the cub's carcass, viewers noticed another motionless bear - first visible as a dark blob and later determined to be an adult male that had mysteriously died. The park was due to host an online chat on Friday to discuss the deaths with viewers and answer questions, even though one ranger advised in an online post that key questions remained unanswered. "Don't worry about asking about the causes of death, as we still don't know," the ranger wrote. The bears' bodies have been sent for necropsy examination - the animal equivalent of an autopsy - to the National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin, the park said, according to television station KDLG. (Reporting by Steve Quinn in Juneau, Alaska; Editing by Eric M. Johnson, Steve Gorman and Lisa Shumaker)
