Sentences with phrase «bears hunt seals»

The key danger to polar bears is malnutrition or starvation due to habitat loss: Polar bears hunt seals from a platform of sea ice.

Furthermore, we assumed above that all neurons of one type behave in the same way in all normal brains, just as all polar bears hunt seals under normal circumstances.

Not exact matches

Species targeted include the polar bear, already under threat due to climate change: Shrinking sea ice makes it harder for the animals to hunt seals, their main food source.

These bears hunt the fat - rich seals that feed and breed around ice, and as seal habitat shrinks, so do the bears» prospects.

At a hamlet on the southern end of Ellesmere called Grise Fiord, whose Inuit name means «the place that never thaws out,» the Inuit have watched the sea ice that supports their traditional seal, polar bear and whale hunting decrease every year.

Global warming has caused big problems for polar bears, which depend on sea ice for access to the ocean so they can hunt seals and other prey.

The bears depend on hunting seals on the surface of the sea ice over the continental shelf, most successfully from April to July.

Scientists have decades of data documenting the bears, and Lentfer says that the bears» weights have been dropping over the past 25 years, indicating that they're having trouble hunting seals on sea ice.

AS POLAR bears roam the Arctic sea ice hunting seals, they are wasteful with their energy.

He re-told the familiar tale of the evolution of land animals from ancient fish, and then considered the return of various groups of reptiles, birds and mammals to an aquatic existence: ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs, crocodiles, sea - snakes, penguins, whales, dolphins and porpoises, manatees and dugongs, and seals — as well as polar bears, otters and water voles, who hunt in water.

Sea ice also provides crucial coastal protection in the Arctic, hunting grounds for local tribes, and habitats for creatures from polar bears to seals.

These magnificent animals are facing unprecedented threats as a warming climate and loss of their sea ice habitat make it more difficult for the bears to hunt prey like seals and find dens for their cubs.

Because they depend on sea ice to hunt seals, the polar bear is considered threatened as global warming melts and thins ice in this region.

These dogs were a huge help to the natives as they were used to hunt seals, chase away polar bears and pull heavy sledges loaded with food or camp supplies.

They were used to hunt seals, chase away polar bears, and sled dogs.

The dogs served as hunting partners for big game (such as seals and polar bears), and hauled the heavy carcasses back home.

These dogs were renowned for their prominent roles as excellent hunters capable of hunting down large predators such as seals and bears.

They were also used for hunting bears and seals.

While utilized as a sled dog, in the past, he was also helpful as a hunting dog for the Inuit hunters helping them catch seals, ox and even polar bears.

Wolves have been seen throughout the park; along the coast hunting sea otter and harbors seals, and in Brooks Camp fishing alongside bears.

As you head farther south you may get lucky and spot polar bears hunting for seals.

Also, as warming temperatures limit seal hunting opportunities on the ice, adult male polar bears will likely fare the best, securing the best sites from smaller bears (females, subadults).

Some evidence of this may be the well - known behavioral (as well as genetic) similarities between the two species — such as grizzlies able to hunt seals on the ice and polar bears able to hunt and capture caribou on land.

It's been clear for a long time that, other things being equal, polar bears have a much easier time when Arctic waters are sheathed in ice to provide a platform from which to hunt and kill seals.

[20] For the polar bears that currently den on multi-year ice, increased ice mobility may result in longer distances for mothers and young cubs to walk when they return to seal - hunting areas in the spring.

There is rising concern among polar bear biologists that the big recent summertime retreats of sea ice in the Arctic are already harming some populations of these seal - hunting predators.

The continuing warming and summertime retreats of sea ice around the North Pole are making life difficult for seal - hunting polar bears, eroding Inuit coastal villages and now, evidently, eroding Arctic defenses (although not weakening them, the Pentagon insists).

What interests me, though, is putting together the lack of ice trouble during the breeding season with the increasing trouble for the bears during the crucial late fall seal - hunting season.

Polar bears are the largest land carnivores in the world, but they are also marine mammals, meaning they spend the majority of their time on Artic sea ice hunting for ice - dependent ringed and bearded seals to snack on.

Polar bears are dependent on sea ice as a platform for hunting seals, and as a pathway to coastal areas.

Polar bears like this one are excellent swimmers but use floating sea ice as pathways to coastal areas and as platforms from which to hunt seals.

Polar bears return to Churchill, the polar bear capital of the world, to hunt for seals on the icepack every year at this time and remain on the icepack feeding on seals until the spring thaw.

The new work, led by Rockwell and Linda Gormezano, a postdoctoral researcher in the Museum's Division of Vertebrate Zoology, examines how polar bears might compensate for energy deficits from decreasing seal - hunting opportunities.

As Arctic sea ice melts earlier and freezes later each year, polar bears have a limited amount of time to hunt their historically preferred prey — ringed seal pups — and must spend more time on land.

Comments Off on Climate change not forcing polar bears to hunt humans but lack of baby seals might

Polar bears (Ursus maritimus) rely on sea ice for roaming, breeding, and as a platform from which to hunt seals.

«Loss of habitat directly impacts polar bears, seals and walruses, which use the ice for foraging, reproduction and resting, and for also for people who use ice for hunting, travel and other activities.»

Abstract Under current climate trends, spring ice breakup in Hudson Bay is advancing rapidly, leaving polar bears (Ursus maritimus) less time to hunt seals during the spring when they accumulate the majority of their annual fat reserves.

For this reason, foods that polar bears consume during the ice - free season may become increasingly important in alleviating nutritional stress from lost seal hunting opportunities.

Polar bears, which hunt for seals along the ice's edge, and walruses, which fish there, will both be hard - hit.

The loss of sea ice can only have knock - on effects for Arctic creatures, such as polar bears, which cross onto the sea ice to hunt for their favoured prey, seals.

it's also fairly logical and rational, even for an ordinary person who isn't a scientist to understand that if polar bears need sea ice to hunt for seals and that sea ice disappears, then those polar bears are going to be in trouble

JS: And it's also fairly logical and rational, even for an ordinary person who isn't a scientist to understand that if polar bears need sea ice to hunt for seals and that sea ice disappears, then those polar bears are going to be in trouble.

Presumably, those bears keep hunting for seals — but how many do they actually catch?

Tagged Arctic, Beaufort, Central Canadian Arctic, declining sea ice, fall, feeding, feeding platform, gorging, hunting, hyperphagia, Pilfold, polar bear, seal kills, seal pups, seasons, spring, Stirling, summer, terrestrial foods, winter

Polar bears are one of the most sensitive Arctic marine mammals to climate warming because they spend most of their lives on sea ice.35 Declining sea ice in northern Alaska is associated with smaller bears, probably because of less successful hunting of seals, which are themselves ice - dependent and so are projected to decline with diminishing ice and snow cover.36, 37,38,39 Although bears can give birth to cubs on sea ice, increasing numbers of female bears now come ashore in Alaska in the summer and fall40 and den on land.41 In Hudson Bay, Canada, the most studied population in the Arctic, sea ice is now absent for three weeks longer than just a few decades ago, resulting in less body fat, reduced survival of both the youngest and oldest bears, 42 and a population now estimated to be in decline43 and projected to be in jeopardy.44 Similar polar bear population declines are projected for the Beaufort Sea region.45

Snow depth over sea ice in spring affects the hunting success of polar bears on ringed seal (Phoca hispida) pups, but the relationship is more complicated than you might think and there is less data on this phenomenon than you would believe.

The question is, why were Southern Beaufort Sea polar bears off Prudhoe Bay (see map of the study area below), still hunting and capturing only adult and subadult ringed seals from sea ice leads when newborn ringed seal pups and their mothers should have been plentiful and relatively easily available in their birth lairs on the sea ice (see below)?

While it is true that some ringed seals give birth in stable shorefast ice close to shore, many others give birth well offshore in thick pack ice — where polar bears also live and hunt in the spring but where few Arctic scientists ever venture — and the existence of pack ice breeding ringed seals is one of the reasons that polar bears are such a resilient species.

Between 1984 and 2009 the weight of female bears in Ontario fell by over 10 % while climate change meant they had 30 fewer days a year to hunt seal on ice