Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to PHD student Henry Anderson-Elliott, the uptick in photos of polar bears scavenging trash dumps or hunting land animals is likely because of climate change.
Polar bears eating reindeer: normal behaviour or result of climate change?
December 30, 2021 10.53pm AEDT
Henry Anderson-Elliott
PhD, University of CambridgeRecently, scientists in Hornsund, Svalbard – a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic ocean – witnessed a polar bear pursuing a reindeer into the sea before killing it, dragging it ashore and eating it. The video that they captured was widely shared on news and social media platforms. Then, two days later, they saw the same bear beside a second fresh reindeer kill.
Their observations are the first detailed account of a complete and successful polar bear hunt of a Svalbard reindeer. But they follow 13 previous reports of polar bears preying and scavenging on reindeer on the same archipelago between 1983 and 1999.
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From stalking and chasing Canadian caribou, fishing for Arctic char and catching geese and rodents to grazing on vegetation and patrolling human refuse sites, polar bears can eat, have eaten and have tried to eat many things.
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But the viability of these onshore food sources is doubtful as a long-term strategy. In their study of foraging on the eider duck nests of Mitvik island, Canada, researchers found polar bears to be inefficient predators of seabird eggs, such that the energy an individual bear gains from eggs may be less than previously thought. That’s because they may use more energy to find the eggs than they get from eating them. Equally, other studies have found that the consumption of terrestrial food by polar bears has been insufficient to compensate for reduced hunting opportunities out on the ice.
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Therefore, increasing reports of summer scavenging, foraging and terrestrial hunting are unsurprising in the context of climate change, high energy stress and the resulting effect on their bodies.
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Therefore, observations like those in Hornsund reinforce the need for further peer-reviewed research on the future of this iconic species. This single event should not be seen as definitive proof of shifting diets in a warmer world, but as a reminder of the spectacular creatures we stand to lose. A species whose fate, even in the distant reaches of their Arctic landscape, is inexorably bound to our own.’
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Read more: https://theconversation.com/polar-bears-eating-reindeer-normal-behaviour-or-result-of-climate-change-174035
Here I was thinking Polar Bears were opportunistic Arctic omnivores, but this is clearly not the case. We have shamefully corrupted this noble green icon with our wickedness.
No doubt before climate change, if a Polar Bear saw a human rubbish dump full of smelly old meat, it would have turned its nose up at the unworthy human refuse, and continued on to its traditional seal hunting ground. Pristine polar bears would never do something as demeaning as eating our trash.
Do I need a /sarc tag?
Much better that they murder seal pups according to the CAGW doomsday death cult
That’s part of the balance of nature…
Or do you think we should round them up and feed them vegan ready meals?
Griff,
I think that’s the only comment that I can recall by you that really made any sense.
Pure accident. Broken clocks and alll.
Well, griff, I’m glad that you admit to being part of the CAGW Doomsday Death Cult.
If you really believe in the “balance of nature”, then you must also disbelieve in the value of being “vegan”!
YES! Human Rights Matter (HRM)! If humans should not eat meat because climate change, why should bears be allowed to eat it? It compromises the “balance of nature”, right, griff?
Can we feed them vegans?
Of course we can. To polar bears, vegans are practically a food group … meat popsicles.
They tend to be a bit stringy with tough meat, unfortunately.
There’s almost never balance in nature. In this case an increase in the number of polar bears without a similar increase in seals has led the bears to seek food on land. Polar bears similarly to their brown counterparts are opportunistic omnivores.
Really, I thought that when you adopted a polar bear through the WWF they had volunteers acquiring and distributing seals (that died of natural causes, of course) to the poor starving baby polar bears they show in their commercials. Who knew that PB’s were capable of hunting and killing reindeer and caribou? That would make them apex predators or something.
Yes. But I don’t think that the Vegans would appreciate being fed to the bears./sarc
I have always wanted to go into a vegan restaurant and order the meat option as the veggie brigade are always complaining about the limited options at restaurants. Just something simple like bacon OH what would the smell do?
James Bull
You are perhaps referring to the revelation that some of the trendiest vegan restaurants had secret meat menus and private meat dining rooms
VREs, Vegans Ready to Eat.
The polar bear equivalent of MREs.
Back when I was in graduate school PHD meant Piled Higher and Deeper, I guess that’s still true…..
As a non American I always thought that PHD referes to Biden and means Pervert has dementia.
Canadian writer Stephen Leacock best described the PhD:
It’s a good joke. The significant output of productive Phd’s is behind much of modern productivity. It’s more a matter of learning HOW to understand the world around us and HOW to apply findings from it to benefit others- even if they are “wicked” enough to make fortunes at it.
My company runs a graduate scheme, I find they come in two sorts.
1- I’ve been to university and there’s nothing you can teach me.
2- I’ve been to university learnt a lot and now need to know how things really work.
The first group tend to get promoted and come back later as managers with the same attitude, try and shift blame and are totally risk averse.
The second group learn how things stand in the company and get themselves a job elsewhere unfortunately
James Bull.
It’s an easy choice between the observations of Henry Anderson-Elliot and Dr. Susan Crawford. “Omnivore” is the key phrase here, bears of whatever color eat anything.
Bearing in mind that polar bears share common ancestry with brown bears, and have adapted to an arctic environment, I’d say they have had this ability for quite a few thousand years
Yeah, polar bears and brown bears are as closely related as coyotes and wolves. So one would expect the same behavior range out of either, that having one set of stereotypic behaviors does not mean that they could not extend their range of behavior.
Lol, the irony is superb.
So much focus on the fate on the highly adaptive polar bear, who’s numbers are clearly increasing which is a reflection of the diversification of feeding habits.
The greenies have not battered an eye lid at the shear amount of garbage in the photo in what is supposed to be a pristine environment. Pollution from all that garbage is a far biggest risk to those polar bears than supposed dwindling ice! (with legal hunting being the biggest risk to a polar bear, I still can’t believe they issue quotas for such an at risk species!)
https://worldwidetrophyadventures.com/trips/nunavut-territory-polar-bear-hunting/
Legal hunting is needed partly to protect the human population and to also keep the bears in sync with the landscape that feeds them. Right now that territory is limited in what it can support. It’s likely to get colder and the bears will have more opportunities.
A species whose fate, even in the distant reaches of their Arctic landscape, is inexorably bound to our own.’
Really?
No Not really! Pretentious verbose nonsense
“Pretentious verbose nonsense”
‘Horseshit’ would be better, but you’re just too polite, alastair.
H.S. rather than B.S. was a more common comment of the High Plains resident.
…. well, it would be inexorably bound to his own fate if he met one up-close.
One can only hope.
Climate change makes me read WUWT.
I used to sort of, almost, believe in AGW- until I read WUWT.
Love your comment, resemble it, and am in violent agreement with it.
Although to be completely accurate, climate change “alarmism” makes us read WUWT
It’s hard to imagine anything dumber than this article.
Bears of all stripes are opportunists, further south the garbage dumps have to be heavily ring fenced to keep on the black bears.
They don’t go there because climate change. They go because there is food there and it doesn’t move.
Sounds gross to us but they are happy to eat a carcass that has been rotting for a couple weeks, tenderizes it, so the smells of a dump are heaven to them.
I think even experienced polies are only successful ~25% of hunts so if food is just laying there.
And there must be a lot of these dumps as there are an awful lot of fat bears out there these days?
Joe Biden has entered the chat
(sorry, but you guys keep feeding me these lines!)
I would’ve taken Kerry ahead of Biden.
There are boxes of rocks that are smarter than that useless cretin.
The joke’s on you! Biden isn’t smart enough to enter chat!
I see a solution of where to ship all our garbage- and get more polar bears too.
Every predator is an opportunist by default.
WhooHA HA HA! Yes, we all know that the carnivores that scour the Arctic Tundra and snow fields for a meal were all very picky eaters before man came along. They often turned their noses up at a putrid many weeks old whale carcass that washed up on the shore.
https://youtu.be/H6LB489uQeQ
Wild animals eat what’s available, they’re all opportunists. If/when they have choices they make them depending on how hungry they are. Garbage to us may be haute cuisine or life saving to them.
Absolutely – Arctic carnivores don’t have the luxury of being fussy. The entire article is absurd IMO.
It’s like the guy is completely out of touch with bear behavior. Is actual research off the table at Cambridge these days? First and foremost bears (of all types) are browsers and scavengers. You can almost see them grinning with glee when they happen upon free food. I’ve see as many as a dozen black bears joyously, even convivially congregating at a garbage dump.
Is actual research off the table at Cambridge these days?
Not just at Cambridge.
🙂 … I’m shocked, I say … shocked!
Why is this idea wrong for polar bears eating bird eggs but works when humans build wind turbines?
Actually they just need Climate Models – they can create energy from nothing.
It might be due to some form of real climate change, but it doesn’t have anything to do with carbon dioxide bogus climate change.
“Sir, do you have a valid reason to be exceeding the speed limit by 57 km/h, in a 45 km/h school zone?”
“Yes officer, climate-change made me do it!”
That is the optimum speed for my car emissions and I was saving the planet. Remember no sacrifice is to much to save the planet.
This truck driver knows that won’t work. I mean when I get a good roll going down hill I’m obviously saving fuel. The faster I go the more fuel I save because that extends how far I coast up the next incline with the momentum I gained on the down slope. But I’m sure that argument won’t mean a thing to the officer that pulls me over.
Officer, my SUV did it. I was just captive for the ride.
Officer: Well I’ve heard that one before and I guess it’s the new normal. You can go try to get that SUV to be a little more responsible. There may be children present someday.
So, too many Polar Bears means the climate is in collapse and we are all goiung to die in a fiery flood. Got it.
….. the Walrus said as the documentary drone buzzed overhead and they stampeded over the cliff.
Decades ago, when I was in Point Barrow, they still used burn barrels and there was little left for the polar bears. Perhaps they have now gotten ‘civilized’ and just dump their garbage. Bears are smart and adaptable animals. If there is anything edible, they will find it!
Polar Bear eats deer in Ontario Zoo and walks away well satisfied.
There is nothing happening in the Arctic climate-wise that hasn’t happened before in living memory.
Incidentally according to models dangerous human-caused global warming aka ‘climate change’ plus strong positive feedback is supposed to be most marked at the surface in polar regions (T change associated with doubling CO2), in which case the above Arctic surface temperature trend configuration seems most unlikely.
Bear in mind (pun intended) that this is from The Conversation, where young academics who have difficulty getting published in respectable journals, find that they can get published as long as they espouse the alarmist view.
When did Cambridge start producing such utterly stupid graduates? Bears are very bright, but somewhat lazy. If a human garbage dump is available, bears won’t hesitate to include it into their range … a high calorie, low effort meal. It has nothing to do with the climate. Wherever there is edible refuse, bears will be in seventh heaven. This has always happened.
I wonder if these researchers considered that the polar bear population has tripled over the past several decades, which would likely put them in more frequent contact with humans and their dumps? But no. That might lead them to consider that mild warming of the Arctic might beneficial (more bears!). That would apostasy to an eco-theologist, so ‘climate change’ must causative and always bad. Lol
Here in central Arizona we are having another gorgeous evening (its raining here and snowing in the mountains!) thanks to ‘climate change’.
Everyone have a great new year!
Bears don’t scavenge garbage dumps because they are desperate, they do it because they love the aroma, like rotting carcasses
It can be argued that polar bears benefit greatly from the availability of garbage dumps. Apart from the obvious, the secondary effect is more offspring. Bears are not naturally gregarious, tending to limit their opportunities to mate … but the reverse is true at these sites. Where there is such plenty, it’s party time.
PhD students aren’t what they used to be.
Phd’s are piled higher and deeper until they fall over spontaneously.
Guess I should take down my bird feeders.
I’ve made them “opportunist”.
Wild animals will feed on whatever takes the least effort.
Polar Bears – “Hmmm? Should we spend hours swimming around looking for a seal or check in at the trash bin that always has something to eat?”
Nothing to do with CAGW.
Wild animals will feed where the pickings require the least effort.
According to the gist of the article’s claim of making the bears “opportunists” I guess man’s agricultural practices have made nearly all wild animals “”opportunists”. Deer, bear, turkeys, song birds, etc. love a soybean field. Corn fields work pretty good too. It’s amazing at the “opportunists” visiting my clover and wheat patch.
I thought this just reflects the larger numbers of bears around these days.
Plus anything that climate loons become aware of for the first time must be a sign of climate change or they would have noticed it before. Yawn.
and it is, because the annual more rapid retreat of the ice to greater distance means there are more of them on shore for the summer.
They are NORMALLY on shore for part of the time during the summer, you continue to ignore this every time you pretend to read these Polar Bear article posted here.
How did the Polar Bears survive the little to no summer ice for hundreds of years at a time during the early part of the Interglacial period?
LINK
You have been told this many times by me your ignorance is a lie.
Liar …. and you know it.
https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/
A genuine question for you, Griff: why do you persist in making demonstrably false statements time and time again? Do you actually enjoy being laughed at?
Griff is a paid shill for the CCP.
You and the author betray your lack of experience with nature, especially with observing how hunting among wild animals works. City dweller born and bred I expect. Wild animals have a bred in instinct to analyze the cost/benefit in food sources.
Ask yourself if a bear would rather munch on an already dead, unmoving meal, even if a little ripe, or would it expend energy locating, stalking and killing fresh prey especially if there is no guarantee of success?
All wild animals do this every day during their whole life. They pass it on to their progeny through learning and DNA. This is what baiting is all about when hunting. It is what every hunter does when deciding where game is likely to be located. You go where the MEAT is.
Speaking of which, I remember reading a story years ago about a freight train crossing the mountains in Montana(?) that derailed and dumped its load of corn. After getting the train back on the tracks, workers with shovels cleaned up as much corn as was practicable. However, they missed a lot under bushes, between rocks, and in crevices. Grizzly bears soon found the corn and had a picnic cleaning up what was missed. For years after that, sows would bring their cubs back to the spot hoping that there might be a renewed supply.
Almost like a four-legged Cargo Cult.
Point of order sir: Anderson-Elliot received his PhD earlier this year, which goes to show how easy it is to get a PhD from Cambridge.
Reading through bio:
Ah! That’s how he was awarded a PhD: he’s an activist
Then there’s this:
I’d like to see him make a reluctant bear have sex
The roles that they play in our societies? Seriously? When was the last time anyone invited a polar bear family for breakfast at Tiffanies?
It gets worse. His thesis was
Good grief
Definite BBC material here.
“His work learns a lot…”
My high school English teacher wouldn’t have liked that.
“
surreal choreographies of species in captivity”“animals in zoos”
There, fixed it.
A clear indication of the decadence of Western Universities.
It appears to me that PhDs are now awarded for opinion, not fact.
Analogous to the 1619 Project being confused with actual History.
It might be more entertaining to watch him try to prevent a polar bear boar from mating with a sow! He could dress up in a white, furry suit and pretend to be a competing male. He could try to dissuade the bear with his flowery academic vocabulary.
I think that the whole situation reflects on how detached academia has become from Nature and reality.
the history and politicisation of the polar bear science discipline;
And just who was that chucking them off skyscrapers and frightening the kiddies?
Anyhow we should all be in tune with nature and bear in mind how they have a strong preference for ICE cars but they make lousy drivers-
Bear In Colorado Trashes Car, Enjoys Snacks – YouTube
I doubt EVs with Autopilot are going to change that.
Henry’s brain is addled. By climate change, I presume.
Havre, MT Weather Conditions
-39 C ST. JOE, NORTH HAVRE STATION
Current temperatures (F) in Montana and North Dakota.
I suspect the change is more due to the increase in phones with cameras.
On my first reading I thought that you might be referring to the alleged harm to the brains of mobile phone users.
“the uptick in photos of polar bears scavenging trash”
Proof of that? all I see is recycled images of one event that happened in 2019 in the town of Belushya Guba on Novaya Zemlya.
Nothing to do with climate but everything to do with dumb humans piling up huge amounts of trash and then being surprised it has attracted bears to their town.
As is often the case with these climate activists they love recycling old stories like it’s something new…… it ain’t.
https://polarbearscience.com/2019/02/09/polar-bears-have-been-terrorizing-a-russian-town-on-the-barents-sea-since-december/
Climate believer,
From your link:
Tidy up the trash and burn it might also be a good solution.
Bears in national parks have been a problem for decades. I have long advocated two simple solutions:
One day a year, allow only hunters with dogs in the park to re-instill the bear’s fear of humans and dogs;
Place some old junker cars in the parking lots, bait them with something with a strong, attractive odor, connect the car to a fence charger, and wet down the ground around the cars so that the bears have a low-resistance contact with the ground.
Bears are very smart animals. I imagine that they would only need one electrifying experience to learn to avoid ripping doors off cars.
We used to vacation regularly in the NY Adirondacks in the 60’s.
The youngsters would always insist on spending an hour or two watching the bears a the dump.
Lots of huffing and puffing on here about the stupidity of complaining about bears on waste dumps, but nothing about the disgrace of the dump itself, especially noting the article above this on the impact of waste.
No one thinks open access waste dumps are a good thing, that is taken as an obvious thing by all.
Except maybe you?
Therefore the point of this post is to make fun of idiocy that arises from it.
When their numbers exceed what their normal food supply can provide…….
I worked in Yellowstone Park in the early 60″s. On several occasions we went to West Yellowstone Montana in the evening and early night. Outside the town was a dump where nightly a large group of Grizzlies gathered to forage. Was that due to climate change (no mention of a climate crisis back then). BTW we saw some incredible battles among them, even watched a car windshield get smashed by one of them.
Yes it would seem very strange to find Polar bears not taking advantage of a “free” meal like that, whether it’s a waste tip or a beached whale.
An animal that has survived inter glacials knows what the score is when it comes to survival, this is not a fragile creature.
So…… polar bears are only supposed to eat walruses? Is that it?
I was under the impression that all bears are omnivores and will eat anything that builds up their fat layers. An example is American grizzlies hiking up mountains to find moths, which are full of fat, so that they can eat the moths and gain more weight for oncoming seasonal hibernation. No walruses nearby anywhere, no caribou but there are deer if a bear wants to bring one down. Also, Russian bears have been filmed eating flowering plants (among other vegetation), in the spring and summer, and bears over here do the same thing. Anything that fills out the need for extended fat reserves is welcome.
Maybe what these observers need to do is have a wider view of bears as omnivores and stop trying to outguess Mother Nature? Maybe they should get out of the lab environment and spend some time in a Snowcat while hungry polar bears are trying to get inside to add Hooman Research Persons to their diet. 🙂
I think, polarbears and also a lot of other animals are oppurtunist, if there is an offer of easy food .
Btw, the reason is not CC, but civilisation and it’s
follow up.
>>reinforce the need for further peer-reviewed research <<
== “send more money”
I wonder what passed in the mind of the author’s cat when it was lazily reclined over the desk and reading what he was typing when preparing the manuscript: “Idiot! Why spend that much energy chasing reindeer when it is so simple to go to your bowl and find the food that those cretin bipeds have thrown there? Do those fools think that carnivores are dumb, or what?”
Lots of truth in that. Remember dogs have owners, cats have staff.
Uptick? Seriously? What’s wrong with ‘increase’?
Wow! And I thought you had to be smart to get a Phd…
Long time back I admired PhDs because I thought they knew a lot. Then I went to college and admired them because they put up with a lot. Now I just wonder why they let it pile up in the lot.
There was a two year summer study of the West Hudson Bay polar bear subpopulation, done IIRC about 2012. Estimate was that about 15% of the annual diet calories were consumed on land in summer. Eggs, an occasional caribou, even some plants (berries). Is normal behaviour. Seals are main food source, not only food source. Like Alaska grizzlies main food is salmon, but not only food.
At the dawn of polar bear civilization, they were hunter-gatherers living in small family groups that spent a large portion of their waking moments foraging for food. Over time they discovered simple agricultural methods and learned how to domesticate animals that provided a reliable source of high calorie protein and fat, primarily fish and aquatic mammals like seals. Growing crops was not realistic because the growing season at high northern latitudes is extremely short but aquatic farming drastically reduced the amount of time required for caloric sustenance.
With their newfound free time, polar bears began to explore other modes of invention and entertainment, leading to a highly sophisticated culture where specialization and trade became possible. Some were primarily devoted to food production while the majority provided other services though barter like child care, education, den construction, transportation, art, entertainment, etc. With the surfeit of leisure time, a class of indolent bears emerged devoted primarily to satiating immediate cravings like hunger, sex, and intoxication, wholly divesting themselves of any sort of productive behavior that involved delayed gratification and self-discipline, like planning, working, saving, and contributing to family groups or the wider polar bear community. Mental illness was rampant among this group, not surprisingly, as thousands of years of polar bear experience demonstrated that indolence leads to mental illness. There is speculation, however, among experts that in some cases mental illness precipitated the degenerate behavior. Research is ongoing.
Polar bears weren’t the only highly evolved mammals on the planet, however. Humans achieved an even higher level of technological sophistication including automation of previously labor-intensive activities facilitated by power production mainly from mining and burning fossil fuels. The climate of earth had achieved a static state where all the forces of nature were ideally balanced until human power production released vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, nearly 4 percent of the annual CO2 flux, raising global temperatures over the last century and a half by as much as 0.2° C causing glaciers to melt and retreat, sea level to rise by a precipitous 0.1 mm per year, devastating heat waves, droughts, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, freezing, winter storms and other extreme weather; all of which were unprecedented until humans upset the balance of nature.
Responding to these massive changes in temperature and sea level rise, polar bear civilization rapidly collapsed and they became opportunists again, devoting most of their time to finding food sources that were easy and reliable, like raiding landfills around human cities with their abundant supplies of waste food and even resorting, on occasion, to stealing butchered game stored carelessly by human hunters or attacking their sled dogs. Such is the pitiful state to which polar bears have been reduced thanks to the thoughtless innovation and industry of humans.
Clearly, the Russians have a better class of dump:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/01/01/polar-bears-forced-migrate-america-russia-climate-change/
What struck me was all the wood that was being wasted. If they couldn’t be recycled for some purpose, the boxes would have made good kindling for wood stoves.
“Churchill (population 1600) has one hotel, a few bars, one supermarket, a fairsized sports complex – and a worldrenowned rubbish tip.
Every year, around the end of July, between 50 and 100 of Canada’s 12,000 polar bears come mooching to the tip in
search of food after their summer semi-hibernation.”
Australian Women’s Weekly (1933 – 1982), Wednesday 21 December 1977, page 2
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/rendition/nla.news-article47254010.txt
The Australian ibis has become known as a bin chicken in recent times.
“In just a few decades, the Australian white ibis (Threskiornis molucca) has made itself at home in many of Australia’s coastal and inland cities.”
I’m guessing sea level rise from global warming has forced then to do it. Couldn’t be anything else.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-07/ibis-bin-chicken-rise-totem-for-modern-australia/10209332?utm_source=abc_news_web&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_campaign=abc_news_web
No self-respecting poley bear would consume the garbage produced by this PHD student.
Scavengers scavenging, hmmm?
I think the practice of foraging predates the birth of the author.
Polar Bear on BBC
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zNO0kxTClYo
Looking at the photograph – my first thought – wood burning stoves are not allowed. Does anyone know for sure?
I suppose the author is unfamiliar with raccoons.
What am I missing? More polar bears in every location should mean more polar bear sightings in every location. Yes? So the math would look like: MORE BEARS=MORE BEARS. Where is my PhD?
hmmm, I could dumpster-dive or sit for hours (nay days) near that air hole and wait for something to pop up