It was the beginning of the environut/granola era in movies. Making the animals seem human, and making them into victims. One way is to give them human voices, so people go, "awww, how cute!"

I was wondering this myself. It did sound like they mixed in some human voice acting.but according to this thread, it actually was bear cub sounds. Interesting.

cough BULLSH!T cough Those sounds weren't made entirely by bears. No way.

I thought the sounds were cute :). I think they made me connect with the little bear cub even more so; he's like a scared child.

I find that so hard to believe. Those sounds pretty much ruined the movie for me!
KIDSFLIX
http://kidsflix.blogspot.com

I wondered the same thing when I saw the film in 1988, but an article in the Boston Globe, by Jay Carr, said all the sounds were natural.
I just dug it up: "A bear cub does exactly what a kid would do," says Annaud. "When little bears are young, they have the same mouth formation and make the same noises. All the sounds you hear the cub make are real cub noises that we taped and then dubbed."
So there was some rearranging, but the cub did all his own vocals.

All animal sounds are original, even Youk & Douce voices. Young bears have a different pitch from older ones; however, the sounds are NOT part of the main scenes. The movie was filmed in poor quality sound & the animals were lined up to a microphone to make the sounds again which were then placed accordingly into the final scenes.
The cougar, Youk (it's Youk on the log, not Douce) & several humans all shared the same space in the water. This after they made a line of rocks in the river for the cougar to stand on & so that Youk's log would stop going down stream.
Furthermore, a rope was put across the river & it was a good thing to since EXACTLY the moment when the scene was finished being filmed, one man lost his footing & went under, camera to. Others tried to rescue him & also got dragged down. No one was seriously hurt in the end & though three or four cameras & a role of actual film went under, they managed to save everyone & everything. (So, I take it the equipment was waterproof)
Also, the hive had about 900,000 bees which ended up driving all the bears & half the humans away LOL
Bart & Youk share the same space as well. Bart was given a cub-size teddy to play with & then introduced to the real thing. He was very happy & the pair got along great.
Get the DVD version & watch the behind the scenes et al stuff.
(Thewlis)SHOOT ME!
(Leo)HOW CAN I, YOU STUPID FCK?! YOU'D JUST BLOWN A HOLE IN MY HAND!!

I agreethe cub sounds like a female voice whimpering. I also wonder how they filmed the cougar/bear cub encounterit looked like they were in the same place but it could have just been really good editing.

Just got the same email today from my mom

I was wondering the same thing when I saw this clip of the movie that is going around in email:
http://www.flixxy.com/cougar-vs-bear.htm
I remember seeing this movie when I was a kid.