A polar bear caught on camera patting a husky dog on the head ate one just hours later, it has emerged.
"That was the only day we didn't feed the f**king bears, the only night we didn't put anything out," Brian Ladoon told CBC News.
Mr Ladoon runs a nearby dog sanctuary in Manitoba, Canada. He regularly - and illegally - feeds the polar bears to prevent them feasting on his animals.
The bear pats the dog on the head (David de Meulles / YouTube)
The video of the bear patting a dog was uploaded a week ago, and has had more than 3.5 million views. The internet went crazy, with headlines like 'We Could Learn a Lot From This Chill Polar Bear Just Petting a Dog' and 'Polar bear filmed petting sled dog just like a human'.
Ours was 'Polar bear filmed patting sled dog in Canada'.
But it seems the polar bear was less trying to be cute, more just playing with its food.
"Conservation officers had to immobilise a bear in that area last week and move it to the holding facility because it killed one of his dogs," a spokesperson for Manitoba Sustainable Development told CBC.
"A mother and cub were also removed because there were allegations the bears were being fed and the female's behaviour was becoming a concern."
The bear and dog, which is visibly chained up and cannot escape (David de Meulles / YouTube)
Mr Ladoon has been criticised in the past for tying up his dogs, making them vulnerable to predators. He's long-defended his habit of keeping the bears' appetites satiated.
"I was tired of the bloodbath," he told Canadian news site Up Here in 2013.
Polar bears are listed as a vulnerable species by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. The Canadian eskimo dog, also known as the Canadian husky, is also endangered.
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