Researchers were using a radio collar to track a mother bear in the wild for a project, but were sad to find out that she had one day passed away, leaving her three bear cubs behind to fend for themselves.

Since the orphan cubs are only around four to five weeks old and could barely walk on their own, they would most likely have died if left in the wild.

https://www.facebook.com/wildinstinctswi/photos/pcb.4761403037242998/4761402377243064

Luckily, they were rescued and taken in by Wild Instincts, a wildlife rehabilitation center in Rhinelander, Wisconsin.

Staff members are bottle-feeding the cubs every four hours, since the cubs are now a little older and have just opened their eyes.

Photo: YouTube/Inside Edition

The baby bears will stay in an incubator for now, with staff trying to minimize human contact with them as much as possible. Since staff are the caregivers and the bears see them with bottles, they can imprint on staff, which wouldn't be good since the goal is to eventually return the cubs to the wild.

In a couple of weeks, the bears will move on from bottle feeding and learn how to eat other foods.

Staff will give the cubs space, and as they grow, they will get a bigger enclosure.

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The four-pound bears will grow to be about 80 to 125 pounds and will hopefully be released into the wild once bear hunting season ends in October.

“They adjust to the wild very well. The thing is, when we do release them, they already have all their fat reserves. For the most part, they almost stop eating completely cause they already fattened up enough and all they want to do is go to sleep,” Mark Naniot, director of rehabilitation at Wild Instincts, told WSAW.

Hear their story in the video below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S__HjJAAP6U