Endangered Polar Bears
Polar bears are classified as marine mammals because they spend most of their lives on the sea ice of the Arctic Ocean. They have a thick layer of body fat and a water-repellent coat that insulates them from the cold air and water. Considered talented swimmers, they can sustain a pace of six miles per hour by paddling with their front paws and holding their hind legs flat like a rudder. Polar bears spend over 50% of their time hunting for food, but less than 2% of their hunts are successful. Their diet mainly consists of ringed and bearded seals because they need large amounts of fat to survive the cold arctic weather. The total polar bear population is divided into 19 units or sub populations. Of those, the latest data from the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group show that three sub populations are in decline and that there is a high estimated risk of future decline due to climate change. Because of ongoing and potential loss of their sea ice habitat resulting from climate change, polar bears were listed as a threatened species in the US under the Endangered Species Act in May 2008.Polar bears are large bears. They have strong legs with large, flattened feet with some webbing between their toes that help with walking on ice and swimming. The wide paws prevent sea ice from breaking by distributing weight while walking. The webbed feet result in making polar bears, unlike other bear species, considered to be “marine mammals” along with seals, sea lions, walruses, whales and dolphins. Taxonomic ally, however, they are still bears. They evolved 1-3 million years ago from the brown or grizzly bears, which still eke out a marginal life along the northern shore of the arctic oceans. Unlike the massive polar bears that can grow huge on diets of abundant seals, their ancestor brown or grizzly bears in the arctic are small, have very lower reproductive rates and eagerly eat almost anything that exists in their environment. Polar bears have evolved something else that is different from their ancestor brown or grizzly bears: most polar bears don’t den; however, all brown or grizzly bears do. When grizzly bear food is covered in snow during the winter, this species must den because there is nothing to eat. In contrast, most polar bears have access to their food of seals all winter long, so there is no need for them to den. The exception to this is pregnant adult females. Pregnant female polar bears must den so that their tiny newborn cubs are born in a warm protected environment; the cubs would freeze to death in the frigid temperatures of the far north if they weren’t born in dens. Sustained by their mother’s milk in warm dens during long winter months, they emerge in the spring large enough to survive with the help of their mother. Teaching her cubs to survive long enough to survive by themselves, however, will take the mother polar bear another two years and sometimes longer. Polar bears are excellent swimmers and they will travel long distances between shore and the sea ice if necessary.
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