I disagree tbat men are taking this in a literal way as a hypothetical. They think they are and they say they are.

But they're not.

They're disregarding the nature of bears, which is generally to by shy, bumbling and rambling, curious, and generally peaceful and projecting their own nature, which is to be aggressive, manipulative, controlling, and domineering onto the bear.

In other words, they are mamint the false assumption that the bear is going to see and treat the woman alone in the woods the way they would.

This is not a literal take.

The bear is never not going to be a bear. It's never going to act like a man. Women are not a bear's natural prey, if you leave them alone, they'll generally leave you alone.

Bears don't want or need anything from you other than coexistence.

Men do.

That is the literal and logical interpretation of the question.

We can readily see this because not all men are choosing man over bear. Far more men are choosing bear too.

The new addendum is to ask young fathers if they'd rather their very young daughter be found alone ijbthe wiofs by a bear or a random man and they are also overehelmingly saying bear.

Their reasoning is extremely telling. What you hear again and again is, "the bear will most likely leave her alone and there's a chance it might adopt her". The unsaid part is that they have zero expectation that a random man will lead her safely home and only that in a situation where there are no consequences to doing whatever he might want to do to her.

The only men I've seen saying the bear is the stupid choice are young men of dating age who are conflating it with rejection and manosphere types who are either raging or covert misogynists anyway (ad evidenced by the attempted drizzle drizzle clapbacks that wildly miss the point yet whiplash right back around to smack headlong into it anyway).

Normal, every day, average men capable of self reflection and empathy are choosing the bear too. And it's a pretty quick assessment for them too.