Super Senses

A polar bear’s eyesight and sense of smell must be strong. Reportedly, a polar bear can smell a seal up to 20 miles away! Their teeth are different from other bears because their diet is different. For example, brown bears mostly eat vegetation, while polar bears mostly eat other animals – primarily the ringed seal. Watching a polar bear “hunt” a seal is a lot like watching someone go ice fishing. Except there’s no warm hut and hot cocoa. Ringed seals spend a lot of time in the water, under the ice. They’re hunting for their own food. But, they have to come up for air a lot. So, they’ll have a bunch of breathing holes scattered around the ice, so that they can pop up for a bit of fresh air before returning to the hunt. These breathing holes are a polar bear’s natural fishing – well in this case sealing – spot.

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A polar bear will stretch out by a breathing hole and wait for a seal to surface. When it does, the polar bear will swiftly swat the seal and essentially hook it with its claws. Sometimes seals are out of the water, hanging out on the ice. Polar bears can easily sneak up on a group of sunning seals and pounce on the unsuspecting prey. Surprisingly, the bears aren’t going straight for the flesh, but rather the skin and blubber of the seal. It provides a lot more energy. Like us, it seems that polar bears like a little variety in their diet. Beluga whales, hooded seals and walruses sometimes make the menu. Polar bears also eat kelp (a type of seaweed), fish, sea birds, and mussels. And like their brown bear relatives, some polar bears – depending on where they live – will forage for berries in the fall.

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Polar bears belong to the genus and species Ursus maritimus, which means, “sea bear.” The term sea bear is appropriate because, as you now know, polar bears depend on the sea for much of their diet. Besides weathering extreme temperatures on land, polar bears go extreme off land, too. In fact, many polar bears spend a great amount of time in the water and on ice floes. Not only have their coats and paws evolved to help make them good swimmers, their body shape has, too. A polar bear’s body is more elongated and streamlined for swimming – they’re missing the shoulder hump of the brown bear. And, its neck is longer, which helps keep the polar bear’s head above water. Polar bears can swim approximately four to six miles per hour and have been spotted pretty far out to sea – as much as a few hundred miles from shore or even an ice floe.

Image © Keith Levit/Shutterstock

Speaking of ice and to go back to what we were talking about at the very beginning of the article -- the interesting thing is that fantasy and reality can sometimes be a little closer than you’d think. In the third book of Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” trilogy, Iorek must take his regained kingdom of armored polar bears away from their homeland of Svalbard because the work of Lord Asriel has caused the climate to change. Svalbard is a real place. And the climate there and elsewhere in the Arctic is being affected by climate changes. But the culprit – actually make that culprits -- are humans and global warming. Right now, estimates for world population of polar bears is somewhere around 25,000 to 27,000. But, because of global warming, scientists believe that number could be drastically different by 2050. Some say the population could decrease by half and others argue it could be diminished by two-thirds. Global warming is causing areas of sea ice to shrink and even disappear. If the projected estimates are true, by 2050, there will be no polar bears living in the wild at all in the United States. Check out our article on carbon footprints to see what you can do to help combat global warming.

Polar Bear Range If you look at a globe or a map of the area surrounding the North Pole, you can see the open range of the polar bear, which pretty much falls within the Arctic Circle. There are five so called “polar bear nations.” Among them are Canada, Denmark (Greenland), Norway (the islands of Svalbard), Russia and the United States (Alaska).