Biologists Finally Know What's Hunting Black Bears in Smoky Mountains — And No One Can Believe It

Black bears are the apex predator of the Smoky Mountains — nothing hunts them, nothing chases them, and for nearly a century nothing has given them a reason to look over their shoulder. Then biologists started finding them dead in the backcountry, dragged off open slopes and buried under mounds of branches and dirt, in places no hiker ever reaches. The wound patterns didn't match anything officially living in these mountains. Two trail cameras caught something moving through the dark that stopped researchers cold.