Dancing bear cubs straight out of Disney movie capture Japanese hearts

The Japanese Internet is going crazy over recent Finnish photos of a group of bear cubs who appear to be dancing around in a circle, reminiscent of the age-old nursery rhyme “Ring Around the Rosie”.

Valtteri Mulkahainen, a 52-year-old Finnish photography hobbyist, says he thought he was imagining the bears dancing around, even going so far as to say the scene was so magical he wouldn’t have been surprised if they had begun singing. Given the man’s situation as he took the now-madly circulating photos, we can’t blame him for momentarily believing he was living inside of a Disney movie.

Unfortunately, there is no video to accompany the shots, so we don’t know if the bears really were dancing or were just aggressively fighting in a manner that gave the illusion of dancing, but for the sake of validating our childhood fantasies, we’re going to go with the former.

While the photos are making the rounds worldwide, the Japanese Internet in particular seems especially enamored with the bear cubs. This is possibly because the Japanese identify a great deal with bears, who roam the hills and mountains of Japan – putting them in close proximity to humans living in all but the largest metropolitan cities.

▼ Looks like they actually were just fighting.

Bears appear to be incredibly smart creatures, capable of riding bikes, stealing honey from research traps, playing musical instruments and teaching children about the “bear necessities” through song and dance. Human beings have also witnessed that bears behave much differently when they believe they are not being observed by humans, as evidenced by Mr. Mulkahainen’s photos and this epic bear dance party caught by an unmanned camera:

Source: NariNari
Photos: Huffington Post via Valtteri Mulkahainen

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