Slice it up, fuzzball!

There are at least ten quasi-clever Star Wars references I could make about the bear in this video. I could go with the ubiquitous "The Force is strong with this bear"; I could say something like "Who's scruffy-looking?" I could go with "Fish, nuts, berries — a Jedi craves not these things." Or maybe: "Judge me by my fur, do you?" How about "What an incredible new stick you've discovered!"



Or maybe I could just tell what's going on in the video. Like many internet memes (the "Star Wars kid" comes to mind), what started as somebody with a stick has become somebody with a lightsaber. Still, this was is particularly cool, and not only because the bear can now chop your head off.

The bear, Claude, lives at the Asa Zoo in Hiroshima, Japan. Some people doubted the authenticity of the original video (the one without the lightsaber edited in), but a zookeeper apparently verified that it was real, that Claude really was twirling a stick in his claws. The zookeeper says that the staff encourages the bear by giving him 15-meter sticks to play with.

Watch the video here.