Photo/Illutration An Asian black bear (Provided by the Toyama prefectural government)

A new study has found that when black bears attack humans, the animals usually target their victim’s faces, which can leave survivors with extensive injuries and disfigurement requiring reconstructive surgeries or even surgical eye removal.

The Asahi Shimbun study showed that 90 percent of bear attack victims who were taken to critical care centers in Japan suffered facial injuries.

According to preliminary figures from the Environment Ministry, there were 217 bear attacks on humans between April and December in 2023, surpassing 200 for the first time since the ministry began compiling annual statistics in fiscal 2006.

Yamanashi Prefecture, which lies just west of Tokyo, typically reports two to four bear attack victims a year.

Fumiaki Iwase, head of the advanced emergency medical service center of the Yamanashi Prefectural Central Hospital in Yamanashi Prefecture, said of bear attack injuries, “Victims often sustain wounds to their arms and hands as they desperately attempt to protect their faces, which the bears go after.”

Iwase described the injuries of the people rushed to his facility as so severe that there were limits to what the doctors could repair.

“Some patients’ faces were so damaged that it seemed impossible to restore them like they were before, even after stitching their wounds,” he said.

Facial wounds often require long-term treatment since the face contains so many vital organs and tissues, including the eyes, nose and salivary glands. 

Kazuya Umezawa, a plastic surgeon at Yamanashi Prefectural Central Hospital, said, “With injuries from a bear attack, the flesh is torn off as if by a blunt object, very different from cuts caused by a sharp object.”

According to the hospital, two of the nine patients treated at the facility after bear attacks were forced to have their eyes removed.

The Asahi’s findings were based on two research papers by Iwate Medical University in Iwate Prefecture and the Japanese Red Cross Takayama Hospital in Gifu Prefecture.

These are among the documents that have been publicly available since 2011 that discuss where victims suffered injuries when mauled by the Asiatic black bear.

The papers found that black bears tend to maul a human’s head and upper body, rather than the lower torso.

Of the 54 cases documented in the two papers, 48 victims, nearly 90 percent, had wounds to their eyes and noses, 22 had injuries on the upper half of their bodies, such as shoulders and arms, while only seven people sustained injuries to their lower limbs.

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