CHUKOTKA, RUSSIA — Video shared on social media of a polar bear spray-painted with graffiti is causing outrage after experts say it poses an extra threat to an already endangered animal.<br /><br />World Wildlife Fund employee Sergey Kavry told the BBC that the video was shared on a WhatsApp group for indigenous people in Russia's Chukotka region, but that he didn't know where exactly it was filmed.<br /><br />The polar bear had been spray painted on one side with "T-34", the name of a Soviet-era tank. It could take weeks to wash off, and would seriously screw up the animal's ability to camouflage while hunting. <br /><br />After Kavry posted the video to Facebook on December 1, it went on to spark outrage among experts and en.<br /><br />Anatoly Kochnev, a scientist at the Institute of Biological Problems of the North, says the bear was probably sedated or at the very least immobile when the letters were painted. <br /><br />So either it was done for science, or as a sick joke.<br /><br />Kochnev says polar bears have been foraging closer to residential areas due to the lack of food, so it's possible the locals may have stepped up to stop them.<br /><br />Local Russian media claims though, that it was an expedition of scientists in Novaya Zemlya that marked the bear after it scavenged through rubbish bins of a human settlement, to see if it would return.<br /><br />Either way, poor bear.
