This is the hilarious moment a mother bear teaches her cubs a valuable life lesson on how to scratch that itch that you just can not reach.

The clip, recorded on a capture camera in Sikhote-Alin Nature Reserve in eastern Russia, shows the mum approaching the tree and giving the trunk a good sniff before she turns around.

Then she ecstatically rubs her back all over the rough bark while the three puzzled cubs look on.

Satisfied, she drops to all fours and walks away, but her curious cubs try to copy her.

But as they stand up on their hind legs and sniff the tree, they are still apparently confused about what comes next and drop down to follow their mum.

Experts say that bears don’t only use trees to scratch their backs but use them as scent-marking posts as well.

Males leave their smell to advertise that they are looking for a mate and females mark trees to tell males they have cubs and they should back off.

The Sikhote-Alin mountain range, where the reserve is located, contains one of the richest and most unusual temperate forests in the world.

Spreading through 401,428 hectares, the reserve was founded more than 90 years ago to protect the population of the wild sable.

Today, it protects many species, including the Siberian tiger, also known as the Amur tiger, which is listed as ‘Endangered’ on IUCN’s Red List of Threatened Species.