Polar bears are unable to adapt to the warmer climate of the Arctic: with the reduction of ice, their traditional hunting areas are also reduced, consequently they lose weight to the point of risking starvation. This happens despite the fact that bears are trying to find new solutions, such as hunting birds or reducing energy consumption, this is indicated by the study led by Anthony Pagano, of the United States Geological Survey, of Anchorage, Alaska, and published in the journal Nature Communication who monitored the unsuccessful heat survival strategies attempted by 20 polar bears for 3 years.
Polar bears spend most of their lives on the ice and their usual food is seals that they manage to hunt by moving between floating blocks of ice, but ongoing climate changes are forcing this great predator to have to change its habits.
Compared to just over a decade ago, ice-free periods in Hudson Bay, Canada, have increased by three weeks and push polar bears to live on land for around 130 days and therefore have to search for food for longer. alternatives.
To understand which strategies might work, American researchers placed GPS collars equipped with cameras on 20 bears who were also periodically weighed and followed for more than three years, between 2019 and 2022. To survive the hot phase, on land, the bears have adopted various strategies: some of them have chosen to enter a sort of summer hibernation by reducing their movements and thus consuming little energy, others have attempted to look for seals by swimming, and still others to prey on birds or mammals, or carrion, algae and berries. But 19 out of 20 bears continued to record dramatic weight losses, amounting to about a kilo a day, and only one managed to gain weight, because he had found the carcass of a beached seal.
For one of the authors of the research, Charles Robbins of Washington State University, “polar bears are not grizzly bears who wear white coats. They are very, very different.” Polar bears need very fatty food, like seals, while all other strategies lead them inexorably to lose weight. A further increase in warm periods without ice will therefore risk, say the researchers, almost certainly leading to polar bears disappearing due to lack of food.
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