A bear that’s “overcome all odds” was caught on camera waddling about the woods in West Virginia on its two hind legs — thanks to a bizarre birth defect that left it with a pair of front nubs.
The bi-pedal beast was spotted last week by hunter Kirk Price, who has trail cams set up in the Appalachian Mountains of southwest West Virginia.
“He’s very elusive and is rarely spotted in person,” Price told USA Today.
“He lives in the mountains. Believe it or not he moves around quite a bit. He has roughly a 5-mile radius.”
Price’s footage shows the black bear strolling about on its hind legs and deftly bending over to forage through leaves on the forest floor.
It was only Price’s most recent sighting of the bear. He and other hunters and hikers have come across it several times in the area.
During one in-person encounter in 2022, Price got a look at the bear’s forelegs and described them as “clean nubs,” which led him to believe it was born that way and not the victim of anything violent.
“I firmly believe he was born that way and has overcome all odds,” Price said.
“That’s what the focus should be on. This bear is truly amazing.”
Price first spotted the bear in 2018, and said it 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,” he told USA Today.
“A cub usually stays with their mother until close to 2 years old,” he added, estimating the bear is now about 8 years old.
The bear — which has apparently not been bestowed a name by the public — is not the first of its kind to be spotted around the woods.
In 2014, hikers in New Jersey began sharing photos and videos of another bi-pedal bear who came to be known as “Pedals.”
Unlike his brethren in West Virginia, Pedals was unable to walk on all fours because of a permanently injured front left paw and a missing front right paw.
He became beloved by New Jerseyans — but was apparently gunned down by a hunter in 2016 who appeared to have purposely sought him out.
Though Price himself hunts bears, he is a firm believer in conservation and said he would never seek out a bear as one-of-a-kind as his two-legged friend.
“This particular bear is special, and I would never purposely hunt him,” he said.
