‘I’m a bad, bad daddy!’: This bizarre bear owner keeps his massive pet from hibernating using one ridiculous trick

Bear owner Jeff “the Bear Man” Watson has revealed his ridiculous secret for keeping his massive pets from hibernating during the winter months. While most animals that sleep through the cold season do so out of necessity, Watson, who has gained over 4.4 million views on TikTok, claims his brown and black bears simply do not need the long nap.

You might be wondering how he convinces a giant bear to stay awake when the weather gets chilly. His joking answer is truly priceless. “I’ll tell you why,” Watson said in his video, which TikTok won’t let us show here, but you can see it on TikTok if you follow the link. “’Cause I look at him and go, ‘You can’t go to sleep! You cannot hibernate! ‘Cause I’m a bad, bad daddy!’”

While that’s a hilarious image, the actual mechanism is much simpler, and it completely changes how we think about bears. Watson explains that in the wild, brown and black bears in North America are primarily vegetarian animals. When winter hits, their natural food sources like berries, nuts, and grasses disappear, which is what forces them to go into hibernation. They slow their heart rate and respiration down, living off the fat reserves they built up during the warmer months until spring arrives.

This sounds like a wild claim, but the science actually backs him up

Since Watson provides his bears with abundant food all year round, they never hit that crisis point where their food supply vanishes. He notes that the bears simply do not have a biological need to go to sleep. “He’s got a bear daddy who gives him his food,” Watson concluded. “It’s not necessary if food’s available.” And the whole thing is backed by science, and it’s not outlandish like the story of the Cocaine Bear.

It’s easy to think of bears as terrifying, meat-eating predators, but they are technically omnivores whose diets skew heavily toward vegetarianism. They consume a huge variety of seeds, fruits, roots, and grass when available. They will certainly eat small mammals or fish if they can, but their main calorie sources come from plants. This means that if you keep those plant-based calories coming, you can expect the bears to stay active. This behavior even occurs in the wild when the conditions are right.

For instance, places with warmer climates sometimes see bears skip hibernation altogether, or they might only sleep for a much shorter period than bears in freezing environments. Commenters on Watson’s video pointed this out, citing that bears in North Carolina sometimes only hibernate for about a month because the climate is too warm. Other users mentioned Kodiak Island, where the bears often skip hibernation because their food is plentiful year-round.

Of course, for many viewers, the science was secondary to the sheer shock of the situation. While some states allow people to keep bears with a permit, it is certainly an unorthodox choice. Many users ignored the discussion of hibernation entirely and instead focused on the bizarre reality of having a massive brown bear as a pet. “Other people out here just living my dreams,” one commenter wrote. Another joked, “I KNEW they could be pet, I KNEW it.”

It’s definitely a strange situation, but if you’re going to keep a bear, it’s nice to know you can keep the fun going without waiting for them to wake up in the spring. The same goes for pet turtles, especially if you are one of those forcing them into brumation.