![]() ![]() They need to stay dry and fluffy to maintain their body heat. ![]() When the hunt is successful, a bear will share a kill with others as long as they beg properly: keeping low, circling the kill and occasionally nudging the hunter with their noses.Īfter eating, polar bears always clean up, which is why their fur stays so white. Polar bears have been known to express frustration when they lose their prey, pounding the ice or throwing blocks of it in a sort of tantrum. Those sharp, 2-inch claws grip the seal extremely well. The bear then makes a shallow dive through the hole to grab the seal with its claws. ![]() When a polar bear spots a seal coming up for air, it gets down on all fours, delicately putting each paw on the ice to keep silent. ![]() Polar bears find such breathing holes and wait, sometimes for several days, until a seal comes up for a breath. In the fall, when the ice is softer, seals cut holes in the ice so they can come up for air when they need to. Polar bears can smell seals more than half a mile (1 kilometer) away, often by the scent left on their breathing holes. It also means that when polar bears wander onto land, they can end up stranded because the distance between land and the nearest ice sheet is too far to swim in one shot.Ī hunt starts with a scent. But with global temperatures rising, Arctic ice floes melt earlier in the year than they used to, reducing the surface area on which bears can hunt. Polar bears can't swim fast enough to catch a seal in the water and need an ice platform to use their full strength to grab one. ![]()
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