Trail Camera Captures 'Truly Amazing' Two-Legged Bear in West Virginia: Watch
The photographer believes the bear to be an approximately 8-year-old male.
A black bear with only two legs was sighted in the mountains of West Virginia.
NOTE: this article was originally published to USA Today's Apple News Channel on September 17, 2024. It was written by Saman Shafiq.
Kirk Price, an outdoorsman based in West Virginia, told USA TODAY Monday that his trail camera spotted the two-legged animal in the Appalachian Mountains in southwest West Virginia.
Price, who shared videos and images of the two-legged bear captured by his trail camera on Instagram, said he believes the bear to be an approximately 8-year-old male. Price said he first found out about the bear in 2018, and the animal was "smaller then and has almost doubled in size since originally spotted."
"At that point he was already walking around by himself and was not a cub," Price told USA TODAY over email. "A cub usually stays with their mother until close to 2 years old."
Price said while he has only seen the bear once in person, he and several others have seen the animal multiple times on trail camera photos and videos over the years.
"Heβs very illusive and is rarely spotted in person," Price said. "He lives in the mountains. Believe it or not he moves around quite a bit. He has roughly a 5-mile radius."
In a 2022 video posted to YouTube, Price spoke about his experience of witnessing a two-legged bear live and said when he got up close to the bear, the animal had "clean nubs" making him believe it was born that way. Price, who was with his dogs in the area, said the bear looked healthy and ran up the hill after he got his dogs away from the animal.
The bear has not been given a name by those who have seen him, and Price said they "normally just refer to him as the 'two-legged bear'."
The rare find is reminiscent of a two-legged bear named Pedals, who was spotted many times in New Jersey before he was believed to have been killed during a hunt in 2016.