Fig tree attack

Some critter (had to be large/heavy) climbed my fig tree and left damaged fruit all over. The strange thing was the branches which are as thick as my upper arm circumference were permanently bent over nearly to the ground so the tops of 10 ft branches are almost touching the ground or leaning  against the nearby apple tree. They didn't spring back up!  I don't know if a 'coon is heavy enough to do that?? Last year a bear got whiff of my apple tree before I finished picking the fruit.  It couldn't climb the tree because the branches are too tight and crossed (I know ...I'm supposed to be pruning the tree right) so I wondered if a bear climbed it? Any thoughts on how to protect a young fig tree?  I thought about putting up an electric fence around it and the apple tree but really don't want to do that!

I don't have any experience with bears eating fruit from the tree... but I do know that an electric fence done right can deter bears quite well.

I am sorry that some critter attacked your fig tree.  It might have been me though it was probably a raccoon or opossums.

I thought this was interesting:

Like a neighborhood—and a grocery store. Crocodiles sometimes dig dens under the roots of figs growing on stream banks. Tree-dwellers like monkeys, birds, and fruit bats enjoy the sweet fruit. Many other animals, including apes, elephants, rhinos, tapirs, and giraffes, eat ficus leaves and stems.

https://sdzwildlifeexplorers.org/animals/ficus-figs

Or like Matt said maybe it was a bear ...

Anne, That info on figs blew me away! For real a wasp lives inside the fig it's whole life?? I  never saw an insect inside one, but maybe I need to look more carefully.  It's a bit unnerving the thought that I may be eating bugs with my luscious figs.

I have never intentionally eaten a bug and never will to the best of my knowledge.

If there is a wasp that lives its whole life in a fig, I may have eaten many of them ...

Black bears tend to try to destroy a lot of our trees, breaking apple tree branches to get to apples. One had scratched against a dwarf spruce and bent branches. Deer do a different kind of damage, but stay outside the fence. Electric fencing only partially deters our bears. Bears also like to bite/scratch into trunks and branches sometimes (one was noted gnawing on the apple tree branch). The only thing that helps is planting trees closer to house where we can see the bears. They are scared of us (rural area).

I believe the female wasp dies inside the fruit, and then all the nutrients from her body get reabsorbed by the fruit.  So if you've ever eaten a ripe fig that had seeds in it, and it was grown in a place where fig wasps live, yes, a female fig wasp probably lived there -- but it would be inaccurate to say you've eaten the insect, because the fruit basically ate her itself before you harvested it.

The whole life cycle thing about the female fig wasp is almost too bizarre to believe. I still have a love of figs but want to know the science behind all this. How the fig eats the wasp. Would it eat us when we put it inside our body? Anyway on another note, I just found out about this product from a neighbor. It sounds simpler than putting up an electric fence around the fruit trees. Has anyone used it? https://niteguard.com/