‘Educate yourself!’: Dan Walker forced to defend himself over animal cruelty accusations with World Cup bear

Dan Walker has been accused of promoting animal cruelty after he shared a video of a bear dressed in human clothing.

The BBC Breakfast presenter sparked a furious backlash on Twitter over the clip which shows a muzzled brown bear walking on its hind legs to drop balls in barrels labelled with countries in a bid to predict World Cup scores.

Walker tweeted: “The Russian equivalent of @BBCBreakfast has a massive bear, dressed in a football kit, predicting the results of matches. I think he might be an #England fan.”

Users blasted his use of tone and told him to “educate yourself” as he was accused of making entertainment out of the cruel clip.

One person tweeted: “Dan, this is neither entertaining or amusing. If you truly thought this was vile (as you’ve said in later tweets) there is not a chance you would have tweeted this using a bear emoji and a joke about it being an England fan. Educate yourself.”

Another wrote: “Before you read the Tone of the re-tweets Dan you thought it was funny so don’t pretend otherwise #Disgraceful.”

A third posted: “Should be ashamed of yourself for making light of animal cruelty.”

Piers Morgan also chimed in, asking: “You promoting animal torture, Saint Daniel?”

Walker was forced to defend himself and claimed he initially thought the bear was a human in costume, before insisting he does not regard animal cruelty as a laughing matter.

He said: “Just to be clear... please stop shouting at me about the bear. I think it’s vile. If we only tweeted stuff we agreed with then twitter would be pretty dull. Thankfully the sort of thing you would never see of UK telly these days #SaveTheBear.

“Please listen. I do NOT think this is cool, funny or clever. I do think it’s VILE. I do not think it should be ignored. I felt - perhaps foolishly - that it would be obvious I thought it was disgusting but I can see the reason for confusion from the tone #SaveTheBear.”

He added: “Also... if you feel that passionately about animal cruelty - with the greatest respect - do something about it because swearing at someone on Twitter doesn’t achieve anything #SaveTheBear. Have a lovely day.”

The footage comes days after a clip surfaced of a bear using a vuvuzela while being driven through the streets of Moscow.

Elia Allen, the director of animal welfare charity Peta, said of the incident: “In addition to being inhumane and utterly out of touch, using a bear as a captive servant to deliver a football is downright dangerous.”