The seemingly hilarious moment a construction worker stopped to film his dog playfully standing off with a brown bear cub on a Russian island, took a terrifying turn for the worse when the mother bear slowly appeared from behind a ledge.
Laughing from the confines of a worker’s shed on Sakhalin Island, the workers joked over the interaction as the curious cub edged closer to them, scaring off their dog.
However, the man was powerless to act as he held the camera on the mother as she emerged with another cub in tow.
A split second later, the trio pounced, with the camera abruptly cutting out.
The harrowing footage appears to capture the moment a bear killed three construction workers and another two in a critical condition in 2014.
The horrifying footage went viral, bringing in millions of views from across the world as a spate of similar attacks sparked fear around the country.
The camera shakes suddenly and a flash of red is seen as the workers desperately try to escape.
What happened to the dog was unclear, and the footage from the other man filming has never been found.
Some disputed the authenticity of the video, according to the Mirror. The Guardian reported that the attack had been “partially filmed”, citing the clip.
The attack came amid a spate of bear attacks on the island and wider Russia. Three bears were reported to have been killed following what Russian media identified as a “surge of bear-related violence in eastern Russia”.
Two were shot on the island of Sakhalin in late June. One was reportedly begging for food on a local road, becoming aggressive when travellers tried to pet it.
Undeterred by attempts to scare it off, the animal “continued to return with enviable persistence” and had to be shot, regional Agriculture Ministry official Andrei Zdorikov told Interfax.
Workers in Russia’s remote forests, often miles from civilisation, remain particularly exposed to bear attacks. Last year, a video shot at a gas-drilling facility in Siberia captured the moment a brown bear entered the compound and savaged two gas workers.
Adult brown bears in Siberia and Russia’s far-east can weigh as much as 1,300lbs (590kg), and become particularly aggressive when protecting their cubs.
