Nutaku, Sad Panda Studios, Crush Crush, and Theobromine Poisoning of bears.

Recently I started playing a nutaku.net / Sad Panda game, Crush Crush. Because a) I have an interest in creating a game like it, and 2) I'm a pervert. It's a dating sim, and an idle game. It does have the ability to poke fun of itself, for example one of the potential dates is a Bear. At on point the bear requests 50 boxes of chocolates.


After some research I realized that Bears have a lower threshold for chocolate consumption that humans, much like dogs. I wrote the following, to support:



I have been playing one of your games, "Crush Crush". Within it there is a character who appears to be a bear. One of the objectives in the game is to give "Bearverly" 50 boxes of chocolates. While this might be acceptable in a human who has a higher Theobromine resistance, bears like dogs have a much lower tolerance. If each box of chocolates is approximately 14 oz, and half of that box is actually chocolate, that would be approximately 21.875 pounds of chocolate.


"In 2014, four American black bears were found dead at a bait site in New Hampshire. A necropsy and toxicology report performed at the University of New Hampshire in 2015 confirmed they died of heart failure caused by theobromine after they consumed 41 kilograms (90 lb) of chocolate and doughnuts placed at the site as bait."


If you take the amount of chocolate and doughnuts these bears consumed, per bear, you would see the number is very close:

22.5 lbs / 1 Bear



There is an LD50(Lethal Dosage 50 percent, a term for when 50 percent of lab animals die, when given that amount of a hazardous material) for human consumption of Theobromine which is 1000mg/1kg, however there is no LD50 for Bears that I can I find. In 28 grams of chocolate(1oz), there is approximately 60mg of Theobromine. A large bear can weigh somewhere in between 272 and 408 kilograms. Meaning a lethal dose if the for a human threshold, somewhere in between 272 grams and 408 grams. And while 50 boxes of chocolate may only hold around 42 grams, with the bears lower threshold you can see the issue. And if any of them were dark chocolate, it nearly quadruples the amount of theobromine.
Would a bear eat 50 boxes of chocolate in a setting. It would, see above mention, bear traps regularly use chocolate. Would this much chocolate kill the bear...I think it most likely would.
Please, don't kill the bear.
Regards,

Dusty C.



In return I received back:

Hello there,

Thanks for pointing out to us that very important fact. We definitely did not mean to suggest or condone any purposeful poisoning of an animal, that would be absolutely cruel. Please keep in mind though that this is a work of fiction and imagination. It'll definitely take a bit of a turn from real life situations, and maybe require a bit of suspension of disbelief in parts.

After all, the typical bear also would not date a person but rather most likely maul them to shreds(unless the bear was hand raised by humans from a cub). Like poisoning, we are not suggestion or condoning anyone go up to bears in real life with amorous intentions neither. That wouldn't only be cruel, it would also just be silly.

I'll definitely let our game designers know about you pointing this out though. I'm sure they'll definitely keep it in mind for the future.

Cheers,

~Sad Panda

I really just wanted some free merch from http://store.nutaku.net/ , but I'm totally happy with this well crafted response.