Polar bears living in the Arctic are losing their way of life and habitat because of melting sea ice from climate change. But according to a new study, the bears are adapting their diet from hunting seals to foraging for food on land.
Polar bears living in the Arctic are losing their way of life and habitat because of melting sea ice from climate change.
But according to a series of new papers, the bears are adapting their diet from hunting seals to foraging for food on land.
Analysis of bear droppings shows that more bears are eating things like bird eggs, snow geese, caribou, berries and seeds to sustain them through the warm season.
Andrew Durocher a polar bear biologist from the University of Alberta not involved with the studies said: “Polar bears will eat anything. The question is: Does….it do them any good? And everything we can see from what bears eat when they are on land is it has a very, very minimal energetic return relative to the cost.”
Polar bears depend primarily on seal pups in their diet to build up fat deposits, so eating plants and smaller game doesn’t compensate for their usual staple source of food.
There are reportedly around one thousand polar bears left in the Hudson Bay in Canada, and some projections have said that the floating ice they use to hunt will be melted completely within the next 40 years.
