Bear baiting, bear dancing, and bile farming represent some of the most severe forms of bear exploitation, causing profound welfare harms to highly intelligent animals.
Bears subjected to baiting experience violent repeated attack, causing fractures, lacerations, and deep psychological trauma. Dancing bears have nose rings inserted through cartilage without anaesthesia. Bile farm bears show extreme stereotypic behaviour indicative of severe psychological suffering. Their cognitive complexity — comparable in some domains to great apes — means the suffering extends beyond physical pain to profound psychological deprivation.