Crowd tests their luck getting close to wild bear for pictures and video at Mount Rainer

The willingness of people to walk up to animals in the wild will never cease to amaze. The lack of awareness of the dangers of doing so is astounding.

Last week, a crowd at Mount Rainier National Park tested their luck by getting insanely close to a wild black bear. For what, you might ask? For pictures and videos, of course.

The bear is doing bear things on the side of the path, you know, looking for something to eat, while tourists gather just a few feet away for the must-have shots of the wild animal in action.

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Perhaps the only thing that is working in most of their favor is the fact that they only have to be faster than the slowest person in the group. That said, I wouldn’t recommend getting that close.

Who knows, what if the bear locks in on you, even though you're not the slowest one in the group? Sure, the footage would be incredible, but at what cost?

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Heading out to a national park and encountering wild animals isn't the same as going to the zoo. There's no enclosure slowing them down in the wild.

The folks in the comment section of the post seemed to understand the dangers. This isn't a fluffy teddy bear. You need to be a whole hell of a lot more than five to six feet from a bear.

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One comment summed up the entire situation perfectly. The commenter wrote about the tourists crowding around the black bear:

"*David Attenborough voice-over* 'The Homo sapiens, each with the survival instincts of a ham sandwich, approach the juvenile bear who could rip their throat out in three seconds, and remark how cute he is. His mother is approaching from the south, and will soon demonstrate why bears will outlast humans as a species.'"

The bear isn't as cute as you think it is. These tourists are lucky they didn't personally have to find that out.