Marc Bouldoukian spotted a brown bear walking along the side of the road in Alaska with a couple of unfortunate “friends” trailing after it. In fact, the friends were parasites. The brown bear had several tapeworms hanging off of it, including one very long tapeworm that appears to be dangling out of the bear’s backside.
“It’s November in Alaska and some bears are still out roaming for food,” wrote Bouldoukian in his Instagram post sharing the video. “This coastal brown bear was making its way down to the river but decided to take a shortcut and walk on road with tapeworms hanging from its back. This is my second time seeing a bear with tapeworms, It’s not unusual for bears to harbor parasites. In this case, the tapeworm comes from the bears’ famous diet of salmon.”
Commenters were mortified, with many people asking how humans could help the bear. Some people even suggested Bouldoukian should have put down his camera and attempted to pull the tapeworm out instead. Thankfully, he didn’t do that, since we doubt the bear would take kindly to that kind of “help.”
According to Nature.org, tapeworms inside Alaska’s bears can grow to be 30 feet or more. The bears eventually pass their worms in their feces.
See a brown bear and its dreadful tapeworms here:
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