A man who had been attacked by a bear responded by a strange means-he grabbed its tongue.

Gilles Cyr from New Brunswick, Canada,  was in his woodlot when a bear just suddenly came charging right at him.

For some reason Cyr's instincts told him to grab a hold onto the creature's tongue.

"When I opened up my eyes it was on top of me - with the friggin' noise, it's crazy the way it growls," Cyr says of that terrifying encounter. "Right from the stomach. It's not from the mouth, it's just inside. His mouth was wide open right in front of my face so the last thing I remember I had his tongue in my hand and I didn't want to let go because he was trying to fight me off. So he was hitting me with his claws, so I says, 'If you're going to hurt me, I'm going to hurt you too.' So he was biting his tongue at the same time."

Gilles Cyr suffered several minor injuries in the bear attack which included a bevy of scratches and bite marks on one of his injured knees. After his tongue-struggle with the bear, he ran straight for the cover of trees when it finally let go of him. He hid behind a tree and the bear eventually lost interest in him.

Playing dead is apparently among the best ways to surviving a bear attack. Last August, a 12-year-old girl in Michigan survived a bear attack by lying completely still until the bear lost interest and walked away.

While black bears are not typically aggressive, the Black bear population in Ontario had grown from 12,000 to 17,000 in just eight years, due to a lack of predators and hunters, thus making them bolder in expanding territory, even if it means coming across humans.

Gilles Cyr reportedly asked the permission of a Warden to track and kill the bear that had attacked him.