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The Revenge of Robo-Bear

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Don't Expect a Fight

Hurtubise might look like RoboCop, but he doesn't want to wrestle bears. He wants to study them. The suit is for protection, much like the steel cage observatories that shark researchers use. Hurtubise hopes to crawl into a den and watch a grizzly mother give birth to cubs.

"We're hoping that when I enter the trigger zone of the bear, it will attack, pin me to the ground and throw me around like a rag doll," Hurtubise reportedly said. "Claws, teeth, ripping at the suit for 10 seconds."

This incredible life mission began when a 19-year-old ninth-grade dropout was panning for gold on Humidity Creek in British Columbia. Down from a mountain meadow came a grizzly that knocked Hurtubise to the ground with a single, solid snout shove.

Lucky to be alive, Hurtubise became a man obsessed. Little is known about grizzlies. They're simply too dangerous to study up close. Hurtubise went back to class and got his high school diploma. He then took courses in "forest recreation technology" at Ontario's Sir Sanford Fleming College and dedicated himself to wildlife research.

But his big breakthrough didn't come in the textbook. It didn't come in field research. It came in the movie theater. When he saw RoboCop — the story of a half-man, half-machine — the idea of anti-bear attire took hold. And as a former scrap metal merchant, he put his professional skills to use.

The Canadian Jacques Cousteau

While he aspires to be Canada's Jacques Cousteau, he's also something of a comedian. In 1998, Harvard University gave him the dubious honor of an Ig Nobel Prize. It's a joke award given to inventors and researchers for achievements "that cannot or should not be reproduced."

Another Ig Nobel winner that year, Peter Fong, a Gettysburg College biologist, was honored for finding that clams reproduce at 10 times their normal rate if Prozac is dumped in the water. The research apparently gave new meaning to the expression "happy as a clam."

At the time, Hurtubise was so far in debt, his bear armor had been repossessed. His creditors were gracious enough to let him take his suit to Harvard so that he could have his moment of glory at the lectern.

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