"primarily along the perimeter of the polar ice pack, rather than in the Polar Basin close to the North Pole where the density of seals is low. Annual ice contains areas of water that appear and disappear throughout the year as the weather changes. Seals migrate in response to these changes, and polar bears must follow their prey. In Hudson Bay, James Bay, and some other areas, the ice melts completely each summer (an event often referred to as ""ice-floe breakup""), forcing polar bears to go onto land and wait through the months until the next freeze-up. In the Chukchi"
"eggs, rodents, crabs, other crustaceans and other polar bears. They may also eat plants, including berries, roots, and kelp; however, none of these have been a significant part of their diet, except for beachcast marine mammal carcasses. Given the change in climate, with ice breaking up in areas such as the Hudson Bay earlier than it used to, polar bears are exploiting food resources such as snow geese and eggs, and plants such as lyme grass in increased quantities. When stalking land animals, such as muskox, reindeer, and even willow ptarmigan (""Lagopus lagopus""), polar bears appear to make use of"
"with cetaceans and sea birds. The polar bear is the most carnivorous species of bear, and its diet primarily consists of ringed (""Pusa hispida"") and bearded (""Erignathus barbatus"") seals. Polar bears hunt primarily at the interface between ice, water, and air; they only rarely catch seals on land or in open water. The polar bear's most common hunting method is still-hunting: The bear locates a seal breathing hole using its sense of smell, and crouches nearby for a seal to appear. When the seal exhales, the bear smells its breath, reaches into the hole with a forepaw, and drags it"
"into dumplings. Polar bears are a primary source of food for Inuit. Polar bear meat is usually baked or boiled in a soup or stew. It is never eaten raw. Polar bear liver is inedible, as it contains large amounts of vitamin A and is highly toxic. Bear meat, with its greasy, coarse texture and sweet flavor, has tended to receive mixed reviews. Bear meat should be thoroughly cooked as it can carry a parasitic infection known as trichinella and is potentially lethal to humans. It is the single biggest vector of trichinosis in North America. Flavor is extremely variable"
"is likely to be young, sickly or injured specimens rather than healthy adults. The polar bear's metabolism is specialized to require large amounts of fat from marine mammals, and it cannot derive sufficient caloric intake from terrestrial food. In their southern range, especially near Hudson Bay and James Bay, Canadian polar bears endure all summer without sea ice to hunt from. Here, their food ecology shows their dietary flexibility. They still manage to consume some seals, but they are food-deprived in summer as only marine mammal carcasses are an important alternative without sea ice, especially carcasses of the beluga whale."
"climbers and can use trees as a place of protection and refuge. Glacier bears move into their dens in early winter, which can be an overturned tree, a rock ledge, or a cave. Glacier bears, like all other black bears, are omnivores, with their diets varying depending on the food source available during the season and the location. Their diet includes young shoots and roots in early spring. During the summer in Alaska, the glacier bear eats the abundant Pacific salmon spawning in the streams. In some areas, moose and deer are a food source for black bears. During the"
"Polar bear The polar bear (""Ursus maritimus"") is a hypercarnivorous bear whose native range lies largely within the Arctic Circle, encompassing the Arctic Ocean, its surrounding seas and surrounding land masses. It is a large bear, approximately the same size as the omnivorous Kodiak bear (""Ursus arctos middendorffi""). A boar (adult male) weighs around , while a sow (adult female) is about half that size. Although it is the sister species of the brown bear, it has evolved to occupy a narrower ecological niche, with many body characteristics adapted for cold temperatures, for moving across snow, ice and open water,"
"consume garbage where they come into contact with humans. Polar bears may attempt to consume almost anything they can find, including hazardous substances such as styrofoam, plastic, car batteries, ethylene glycol, hydraulic fluid, and motor oil. The dump in Churchill, Manitoba was closed in 2006 to protect bears, and waste is now recycled or transported to Thompson, Manitoba. Although seal predation is the primary and an indispensable way of life for most polar bears, when alternatives are present they are quite flexible. Polar bears consume a wide variety of other wild foods, including muskox (""Ovibos moschatus""), reindeer (""Rangifer tarandus""), birds,"
"account of the behaviour in recent decades. Mature bears tend to eat only the calorie-rich skin and blubber of the seal, which are highly digestible, whereas younger bears consume the protein-rich red meat. Studies have also photographed polar bears scaling near-vertical cliffs, to eat birds' chicks and eggs. For subadult bears, which are independent of their mother but have not yet gained enough experience and body size to successfully hunt seals, scavenging the carcasses from other bears' kills is an important source of nutrition. Subadults may also be forced to accept a half-eaten carcass if they kill a seal but"
"concentration of marine mammals, especially ringed seals, which are a common staple to polar bears diet. An international study led by Penn State University and the University of Buffalo has estimated that polar bears split from brown bears between 4 million and 5 million years ago. This would have been due to climate changes, which included ice ages. Hybrids have also been documented within the Northern Beaufort Sea of Arctic Canada. This is an area where the range of polar bears overlaps with the range of brown bears. Data was collected using the entire genome of three brown bears and"
"giant panda to the very common black bear. Common characteristics of modern bears include a large body with stocky legs, a long snout, shaggy hair, plantigrade paws with five nonretractile claws, and a short tail. Most bears are omnivorous, with largely varied diets that include both plants and animals. The polar bear is the most carnivorous of bears due to the arctic climate in which it lives, and shows a preference for eating seals. The giant panda is the most herbivorous bear and has evolved a number of adaptations, including a sixth ""toe"", specialized teeth, and strong jaw muscles, to"
"Pullman's fantasy trilogy ""His Dark Materials"" are sapient, dignified polar bears who exhibit anthropomorphic qualities, and feature prominently in the 2007 film adaptation of ""The Golden Compass"". The television series ""Lost"" features polar bears living on the tropical island setting. Polar bear The polar bear (""Ursus maritimus"") is a hypercarnivorous bear whose native range lies largely within the Arctic Circle, encompassing the Arctic Ocean, its surrounding seas and surrounding land masses. It is a large bear, approximately the same size as the omnivorous Kodiak bear (""Ursus arctos middendorffi""). A boar (adult male) weighs around , while a sow (adult female)"
"giant panda and the mostly carnivorous polar bear. However, all bears feed on any food source that becomes seasonally available. For example, Asiatic black bears in Taiwan consume large numbers of acorns when these are most common, and switch to ungulates at other times of the year. When foraging for plants, bears choose to eat them at the stage when they are at their most nutritious and digestible, typically avoiding older grasses, sedges and leaves. Hence, in more northern temperate areas, browsing and grazing is more common early in spring and later becomes more restricted. Knowing when plants are ripe"
"by altering the distribution of important prey species, and changing the suitability of breeding sites and migratory routes. The Arctic food chain would be disrupted by the near extinction or migration of polar bears. Arctic sea ice is the polar bear's habitat. It has been declining at a rate of 13% per decade because the temperature is rising at twice the rate of the rest of the world. By the year 2050, up to two-thirds of the world's polar bears may vanish if the sea ice continues to melt at its current rate. A study by evolutionary biologists at the"
"with differing diets, even though they diverged only 150,000 years ago, the polar bear is the most highly carnivorous bear (more than 90% of its diet is meat) while the grizzly bear is one of the least carnivorous in many locales, with less than 10% of its diet being meat. Hypercarnivore A hypercarnivore is an animal which has a diet that is more than 70% meat, with the balance consisting of non-animal foods such as fungi, fruits or other plant material. Some extant examples include crocodiles, alligators, owls, shrikes, eagles, felids, most wild canids, dolphins, orcae, snakes, spiders, scorpions, mantises,"
"part of the polar bear's range, and this is indeed where significant degradation of local populations has been observed. The Western Hudson Bay subpopulation, in a southern part of the range, also happens to be one of the best-studied polar bear subpopulations. This subpopulation feeds heavily on ringed seals in late spring, when newly weaned and easily hunted seal pups are abundant. The late spring hunting season ends for polar bears when the ice begins to melt and break up, and they fast or eat little during the summer until the sea freezes again. Due to warming air temperatures, ice-floe"
"include many ""Prunus"" species including prunes and cherries, crowberries (""Empetrum nigrum""), pears (""Pyrus"" ssp.), crabapples (""Malus"" ssp.), brambles (""Rubus fruticosus""), raspberries (""Rubus idaeus""), bearberries (""Arctostaphylos"" ssp.) (reportedly named for bears' fondness for them), blueberries (""Vaccinium"" ssp.), lingonberries (""Vaccinium vitis-idaea"") and huckleberries (""Vaccinium parvifolium""). Fruit appears to become more secondary in the diet in areas where hard masts and animal protein are abundant in late summer and fall, as these more protein-rich foods appear to be more nutritious for bears than carbohydrate-rich fruits are, despite their fondness for fruit. Even where fruit are commonly eaten, other foods must be eaten to"
"their differing areas based on opportunity. In spring, winter-provided carrion, grasses, shoots, sedges and forbs are the dietary mainstays for brown bears from almost every part of their distribution. Fruits, including berries, become increasingly important during summer and early autumn. Roots and bulbs become critical in autumn for some inland bear populations if fruit crops are poor. The dietary variability is illustrated in the western United States, as meat made up 51% of the average year-around diet for grizzly bears from Yellowstone National Park while it made up only 11% of the year-around diet for grizzlies from Glacier National Park"
"Bear Bears are carnivoran mammals of the family Ursidae. They are classified as caniforms, or doglike carnivorans. Although only eight species of bears are extant, they are widespread, appearing in a wide variety of habitats throughout the Northern Hemisphere and partially in the Southern Hemisphere. Bears are found on the continents of North America, South America, Europe, and Asia. Common characteristics of modern bears include large bodies with stocky legs, long snouts, small rounded ears, shaggy hair, plantigrade paws with five nonretractile claws, and short tails. While the polar bear is mostly carnivorous, and the giant panda feeds almost entirely"
"illustrates the polar bear's dietary flexibility but it does not represent its life history elsewhere. Most polar bears elsewhere will never have access to these alternatives, except for the marine mammal carcasses that are important wherever they occur. In Svalbard, polar bears were observed to kill white-beaked dolphins during spring, when the dolphins were trapped in the sea ice. The bears then proceeded to cache the carcasses, which remained and were eaten during the ice-free summer and autumn. Courtship and mating take place on the sea ice in April and May, when polar bears congregate in the best seal hunting"
"out onto the ice. The polar bear also hunts by stalking seals resting on the ice. Upon spotting a seal, it walks to within , and then crouches. If the seal does not notice, the bear creeps to within of the seal and then suddenly rushes to attack. A third hunting method is to raid the birth lairs that female seals create in the snow. They may also feed on fish. Sirenians are referred to as ""sea cows"" because their diet consists mainly of sea-grass. When eating, they ingest the whole plant, including the roots, although when this is impossible"
"emerging from hibernation, as they assist in rebuilding muscle and strengthening the skeleton and are often the only digestible foods available at that time. During summer, the diet largely comprises fruits, especially berries and soft masts such as buds and drupes. During the autumn hyperphagia, feeding becomes virtually the full-time task of American black bears. Hard masts become the most important part of the American black bear's diet in autumn and may even partially dictate the species' distribution. Favored masts such as hazelnuts, oak acorns and whitebark pine nuts may be consumed by the hundreds each day by a single"
"diet is dominated by bog birch (""Betula glandulosa""), which is preferred but not always available. Greyleaf willow (""Salix glauca"") is eaten most often when bog birch is not available. Buffaloberry (""Shepherdia canadensis"") is the fourth most common diet item. White spruce (""Picea glauca"") is eaten, but not preferred. In Alaska, spruce, willows, and alders comprise 75% of snowshoe hare diets; spruce needles make up nearly 40% of the diet. In northwestern Oregon, winter foods include needles and tender bark of Sitka spruce, Douglas-fir, and western hemlock (""Tsuga heterophylla""); leaves and green twigs of salal; buds, twigs, and bark of willows;"
"are carnivorous. In a Greek food study, soft mast were found to outrank hard masts as a food source, with about a quarter of the year-around diet consisting of the legume ""Medicago"". Fruits and berries are indispensable for brown bears in most areas as a high-energy food stuff for bears which is necessary to survive the hibernation cycle. The variety of fruits consumed is high, with most of the well-known, wild fruiting plants in temperate North America and Eurasia attracting brown bears in late summer and fall. Among the most prominent fruits found in their foods from through the range"
"scooped on the underside to assist in digging in the ice of the natural habitat. Research of injury patterns in polar bear forelimbs found injuries to the right forelimb to be more frequent than those to the left, suggesting, perhaps, right-handedness. Unlike the brown bear, polar bears in captivity are rarely overweight or particularly large, possibly as a reaction to the warm conditions of most zoos. The 42 teeth of a polar bear reflect its highly carnivorous diet. The cheek teeth are smaller and more jagged than in the brown bear, and the canines are larger and sharper. The dental"
"impede the rodents' rocky escape routes. In Denali National Park, Arctic ground squirrels represent about 8% of the year-round diet of grizzly bears and are the most consistent source of animal protein for grizzlies there. An even more important dietary relationship with a small mammal occurs in the Tibetan blue bear, which is apparently the most completely carnivorous brown bear type, foraging most regularly for plateau pikas (""Ochotona curzoniae""), a species about one-sixth the weight of an Arctic ground squirrel. As many as 25 pikas have been found in a single bear's stomach and in Changtang, 60% of the diet"
"the frigid water"". This is the first species of sea anemone that has been observed to live in ice rather than on the ocean floor. Research regarding the diet and lifestyle of ""Edwardsiella andrillae"" is ongoing. Climate change and the reduction of sea-ice in polar regions has had significant impacts on organisms that prefer or depend on ice habitats. A ""stochastic population projection"" has shown that there will likely be drastic declines in the polar bear population by the end of the 21st century. Polar bears rely on seals and fish as their primary food source. While the bears can"
"supplement their diet with green vegetation and fruit. Through July to September, they will climb trees to eat bird cherries, pine cones, vines and grapes. On rare occasions they will eat dead fish during the spawning season, though this constitutes a much lesser portion of their diet than in brown bears. In the 1970s, black bears were reported to kill and eat Hanuman langurs in Nepal. They appear to be more carnivorous than most other bears, including American black bears, and will kill ungulates with some regularity, including domestic livestock. Wild ungulate prey can include muntjacs, serow, takin, wild boar"
"the Arctic is the polar bear, feeding mostly on seals, including the ringed seal. Yet through further exploration, the potential fates of this Arctic food web seem to be ambiguous, leading to a very important trade off of polar bear mortality and ringed seal sustenance. Most research on ringed seals is focused on their requirement of sea-ice to live and reproduce. With proposed climate change increases to occur most dramatically at the poles, the Arctic is fated to change extremely mainly with the melting of ice and changes in snowfall. Ferguson et al. studied ringed seal recruitment in western Hudson"
"pods are often made up of two to three generations of the same family. Adolescent orcas help care for the young in the pod by training them to hunt fish and seals. Polar bear - Under their thick white coats, polar bears have black skin which they use to absorb the sun’s rays. Their paws are large and webbed, giving them traction on the ice and making them excellent swimmers. Puffin - One of the only three birds in the game, it only eats cod. Snowy owl One of the only three birds in the game, it eats hares, lemmings,"
"they may actively feed at any time. Up to 85% of the American black bear's diet consists of vegetation, though they tend to dig less than brown bears, eating far fewer roots, bulbs, corms and tubers than the latter species. When initially emerging from hibernation, they will seek to feed on carrion from winter-killed animals and newborn ungulates. As the spring temperature warms, American black bears seek new shoots of many plant species, especially new grasses, wetland plants and forbs. Young shoots and buds from trees and shrubs during the spring period are also especially important to American black bears"
"and narwhals (""Monodon monoceros""), by swiping at them at breathing holes. The whales are of similar size to the walrus and nearly as difficult for the bear to subdue. Most terrestrial animals in the Arctic can outrun the polar bear on land as polar bears overheat quickly, and most marine animals the bear encounters can outswim it. In some areas, the polar bear's diet is supplemented by walrus calves and by the carcasses of dead adult walruses or whales, whose blubber is readily devoured even when rotten. Polar bears sometimes swim underwater to catch fish like the Arctic charr or"
"the holes. The seals and walrus occupy areas of fast ice, which is essential for giving birth and raising the pups. Bearded seals feed near the bottom of the bay and therefore are restricted to the shallow waters. Ringed seal is the most common meal of the polar bear. It is also an occasional prey of the walrus and Arctic fox. Most large animals of the bay are being traditionally hunted, but the hunting has been restricted in the 20th century in order to preserve the wildlife population. For example, the quota for polar bears in the bay area is"