Bear Care: Captive Bear Saves an Injured Crow From Drowning [VIDEO]

A Syrian Brown Bear was recently caught on camera saving the life of what appears to be an injured black hooded crow. This, of course, has raised some questions as to why the bear didn't just eat the helpless bird.

The video was filmed by Aleksander Medveš last June, when he took a trip to the Budapest Zoo in Hungary. Since it was uploaded on YouTube on June 21, the two minute clip has earned more than 13 million views.

Like most Brown Bears, the Syrian Brown Bear is omnivorous - it will eat plants and animals in equal quantities. It is also the smallest of the sub-species, making it more of a scavenger than a hunter. Still, when hungry enough, then animals have been known to attack isolated villages and livestock in the Middle East.

Knowing this, it wasn't hard to picture this scavenging opportunist deftly chomping off the crow's head after scooping it out of the water.

Instead, the bear just sets the little bird down on a nearby rock and goes back to its meal of fruits and veggies scattered on the habitat floor.

[Credit: Aleksander Medveš ]

A meal for later? Perhaps, but it is just as likely that the bear knows it's bound to get much more satisfaction out of a juicy apple than snacking on some scrawny and soaked bird bones.

It's certainly not uncommon for bears to chose plants over even the most readily served plates of meat. Nature World News recently reported how Grizzley bears - known as apex predators in their own right - have recently begun to munch on a lot more berries now that recovering wolf populations are keeping moose populations controlled, in-turn allowing over-foraged berry bushes to regrow.

Still, if fantasies of a timeless friendship between bear and crow have slipped into your mind, I won't be the one to tell you it can't happen. Numerous unusual friendships have been seen in enclosed and captive environments, where even partially domestic animals pick up habits we'd never see in nature. A soft spot for one flightless crow is certainly not out of the question.