As wild bear populations rebound in some areas, encounters between bears and dogs are increasingly common. The NY Times has a weird story about people trying to study these interactions, which are, of course, more complex and diverse than many people would suspect.
Anyway I was struck that the article fails to mention one of the most important and best understood facts about these interactions. Dogs, and even sometimes cats, regularly scare away wild predators because they have much less fear of being injured. An injured wild predator can't hunt and will likely starve. An injured domesticated animal can retreat to its comfortable home and be fed by its owner; if it is more seriously hurt it will get a trip to the vet for medical care.
This greater risk tolerance of domestic animals with a support system behind them underlies all those videos of pets chasing away bears and mountain lions.
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Possibly, but unlikely. Animals don't think through outcomes in this sort of way. Indeed, most pets are terrified of trips to the vet, and certainly won't be banking on medical attention should they get hurt.
One explanation is simply survivor bias. People don't (usually) post videos of domestic cats and dogs being ripped apart by bears. And if they did, such videos on YouTube would probably get taken down. So, what we see are the videos where Tiddles or Rex chases off a grizzly.
Another explanation, at least for dogs, is they have been selected, across thousands of years, to guard human property and human life. While that's been supplemented with other instincts and talents as we've bred other sorts of dogs, many, even most, will have some sort of tendency to stand their ground and bark when they feel their home turf is under threat. That's more usually directed at the mailman, but the result is the same.
Cats are more difficult to explain. In the wild, their ancestors weren't apex predators in the same way as wild dogs (i.e., wolves) were. So, wild cats normally avoid interactions with substantially larger predators and are famously reclusive. On the other hand, when cornered, wild cats are incredibly aggressive, and we see that in domestic cats as well. Bears (like most predators) seek to avoid damage because even a small injury, to the face for example, could make it difficult for them to hunt. If 'surprised' by an animal that looks like it could dish out some unknown amount of damage, and if the bear isn't desperately hungry -- it might simply decide the risk isn't worth it.
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