Leave your bacon deodorant at home when hiking Yellowstone this fall - the grizzly bears are extra hungry this year. A shortage of one of their major food sources, nuts from whitebark pine cones is scarce, meaning they’re on the lookout for other sources of protein.

Full-grown Yellowstone bears can stand 6 feet tall and top 600 pounds. They have been known to peel off a man’s face with a single swipe of their massive, clawed paws.

This is, of course, way worse news for bears than it is for humans in Yellowstone. Not only do they have to starve, but bear-human encounters are actually much more fatal for bears than they are humans. While it’s rare for humans to get killed or injured, so far 22 bears have been killed or removed from Yellowstone this year.

Tags: bear attack, yellowstone

This entry was posted on Monday, August 23rd, 2010 at 1:25 pm and is filed under National Parks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.