Would riding bares be practical?

>>32640157
No.

bears arent that fast

>>32640157
I rode your mum bareback last night

>>32640217
they don't need to be fast

>>32640217
They're pretty fast over short distances, actually.

You want to ride naked? Ask your teacher for help spelling.

>>32640239
I mean the whole point of cavalry is to be fast and maneuverable, so they really do.

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>>32640157
goats are better

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>>32640663
Well since they can take down deer, elk, and even moose in sub alpine country I would have to say they are pretty damnesty fast.

The problem is they are sprinters, so you would need to develop some weird stealth-shock calvary corps... and figure out how to make bears not kill the humans/eachother.
Pic slightly related to that other anon

>>32640157
>riding bares

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Clearly

>>32640157
I dunno, thasa big doggo

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If you could somehow train the bears to act like proper war horses, I'm pretty sure heavily armored bear shock cave would be fucking devastating. Just think about how much damage guys on regular horses can do if utilized properly. With horses you pretty much get one good charge before you should pull out and charge again. With bears you could basically just charge straight into infantry and let them do the work. They'd be much more agressive than a horse and faster as well in a charge (35 mph for a brown bear compared to 30mph for a horse, which is kind of irrelevant anyway because you don't gallop at full speed in a cav charge anyway) as well as being harder to kill. Sure horses would still be better in certain roles, but as heavy shock cave bears would rape.

>>32640217
>>32640622
35-40mph if I remember correctly

>>32642006
that's 56~kph in non-retarded version

>>32640157
I'd ride a bare into combat, but i'd want atleast one ranged weapon, not a sword and a shotgun.

>>32642115
fight me irl fggt 1v1

spelling bears right would be practical

>>32640228
*bearback

>>32640157
Not in combat, but possibly as all terrain transport.

In combat, the only advantage to a bear is that it can fuck people up. But it's slow as shit and can't fuck people up while also carrying you.

>>32640665
Nah, goats are assholes and stubborn.

>>32642505

He's asking if it's practical to ride while nude.

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>>32640157
I ride your mom bareback every night OP.

>Bears

Fucking tard.

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>>32643660
>bears
>slow
>can't fuck people up while carrying a puny human

>>32642115
Your units are small and inferior. What is walking speed? 200 kph?

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>>32640157
Assuming we have domesticated bears to the same extent that we have dogs, I think they would be highly practical if conditions were met. Bears can reach speeds that are comparable to racehorses, and they're obviously capable of dealing a large amount of damage in close quarters. They are very intelligent, so it would be something like having a 1,300 lb dog. The main drawback I could imagine is keeping the thing fed. During normal activities from spring to early fall, they consume between 5,000-8,000 calories per day. In the setting of the OP pic, I would say that supply shortages would be a very real possibility. It would be difficult to justify feeding a bear 5,000 calories per day if the soldiers around it were starving. Starving bears are not known to be the safest animals and with dead and dying soldiers laying around everywhere, I'm sure issues will pop up.

>>32640157
Go back to /vp/. That's a dumb question and you know it.

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As the >>32643867 said, bears are pretty much a hungry bunch, but would very well be pretty devastating. Also, is that Wojtek the artillery bear?

Anyway, back to the cavalry thing. Bears really aren't "made" for carrying loads on their backs. While it is cool as fuck, It'd be really bad for the bear, save for really large bear and fairly lean rider, to the point that the burden is insignificant.

Now, boars, on the other hand! WAAAGH!
While bears are pretty damn omnivorous, pigs can and will eat pretty much anything. Plus, casualties are delicious.

>>32643891
>Also, is that Wojtek the artillery bear?
I believe so, but I couldn't tell you for sure.

>Bears really aren't "made" for carrying loads on their backs.
Neither were horses or llamas or camels, but when we domesticated them we bred them to suit that purpose. If you were to go capture a wild bear and try to make it work in the calvary, it would be disastrous. However, If we assume some alternate timeline where bears were we decided to domesticate bears, I'm sure they would be used for transportation in some capacity eventually. Dogs pull sleds in some places. I'd have to imagine that keeping a full team of dogs fed while traversing large swaths of wilderness could be comparable to keeping one bear fed. Also, if bears had been domesticated as far back as we domesticated dogs, we would likely see a large variety of bear breeds, so that would likely play into it.
>you are now imagining what bear corgis and chihuahuas would look like

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I'm going off on what's probably more of an /an/ tangent, but so be it.
The Russians and the Swedes actually experimented with domesticating moose for riding, and knowing how twisted and evil Sweden was and Russia is, they no doubt had some military designs in mind for them. Keeping in mind how huge they are and how well they are suited to the northern climates in those countries, plus that they scare horses shitless when they come running, it obviously made some kind of sense back in the 1790s when the Swedes tried it out.

The project failed because moose cannot easily be herded together and living like, say, horses, but instead need to roam, more like reindeer, on account of them needing a more varied diet. The calves also need to be bottle-fed for a period, as to become accustomed to humans. For that reason, the project was deemed less than feasible (Huge resources required for minimal output) and canned. The Russians had originally planned to use the animals to help haul timber and feed them shavings and sawdust, and eventually butcher the full-grown animals for fur and meat.

The Russians, however, found potential in moose milk, which is very much like cow milk, and is to this day being produced on a large-ish scale.

Pic related, it's Stolta the moose - A Swedish moose that was entered in a horse race in 1907, and who, according to some, won the race. She was raised by a bunch of woodsmen who found her after her mother was run over by a train.

>>32643867
>Assuming we have domesticated bears to the same extent that we have dogs
Since we domesticated dogs roughly 32,000 years ago, I'd say this would probably require some sort of human alternate history.

It'd also result in bears that are probably a bit bigger and a lot more rugged than they are now, since horses have been changed to suit our needs of them.

>>32644001
>I'd say this would probably require some sort of human alternate history.
I think this it what the concept really hinges on. It might not take long to domesticate bears in a way that would make them useful for war, but we don't know because it never really happened. That means for the answer to OP's question to be yes, we would either have to travel to an alternate universe where it did happened or start a domestic bear breeding program. Personally, I think we need to fund it as soon as possible, because bears are probably the comfiest animals in existence.

>>32643959
Fair points. Also, curse you for that bear corgis and so on. Does that mean we would have real-life teddy bears? Hah! Also, imagine a SAPI/whatever armoured bear, or boar, maybe with steel-shod tusks for that matter. I'd be scared shitless.

>>32644030
Dogs became domesticated because they are social animals who liked being around humans. You can't just take an animal and domesticate it by trying really hard.

>>32642157
that's the point, an archer can ride a bear into combat, while the bears can maul anyone at close range.

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>>32642115
Go to the moon faggot, oh wait...

>>32643965
ok, what about elk?

Elk are very social and can be herded together.

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>>32640157
>hurr durr slav is stronk

>>32644790
and are very tasty

>>32644001
>32,000 years ago

You say that like a fact. Who wrote your history book, Muhreen?

>>32644069
Dogs became domesticated because wolves learned they could get an easy meal by following bands of hunters, not just because they liked them. Wild cats are almost exclusively solitary, yet we domesticated those. In fact, I'd say bears are more social than cats, as they often necessary for them to gravitate around food sources during the fall, such as during fish spawns. Being highly social certainly helps, but its not a complete necessity. I'm not saying it would be easy to domesticate bears, but it wouldn't be impossible.

>>32645538
The archaeological record shows the first undisputed dog remains buried beside humans 14,700 years ago,[8] with disputed remains occurring 36,000 years ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_the_domestic_dog

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>>32645969
Fair enough. I'll accept that. Still it's just a guess tho. We obviously domesticated dogs a long time ago.

We've proven through breeding it's easy to manipulate them tho. I don't believe with any proof we know this for a fact. Those cave paintings in France are the earliest example of human articulation, and only 36 thousand years old, iirc.

Pic is way not related, but why not

>>32646047
It's a statement based on evidence presented, as known to be true at the time. No shit we don't "know" when dogs were domesticated. We do know however that it predates civilization itself, he'll it likely predates agriculture.

>>32640157
>riding bares
>bares

bears can run up to 30 miles per hour, that fast enough for a charge>>32640217
>>32640622
>>32640663

>>32643867
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqS-yjzSOOU

>>32640157
>Would riding bares be practical?
no, it's even less practical than riding horses.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJ4T9CQA0UM
buffalos on the other hand...