It was already known that polar bears have cannibalistic trades however they never acted on Earth due to abundance of food and resources.
It is no news that climate change is severely impacting the regular functioning of the environment in the polar regions. And now it has severely impacted lives of polar bears in the Arctic too, turning them cannibalistic.
It was already known that polar bears have cannibalistic trades however they never acted on Earth due to abundance of food and resources.
The increasing temperature, as well as human involvement in the Arctic, has resulted in the ice plains to melt. this has completely destroyed the habitats through which a polar bear would normally hunt for food.
According to polar bear expert, Ilya Mordvintsev at Moscow’s Severtsov Institute of Problems of Ecology and Evolution, “Cases of cannibalism among polar bears are a long-established fact, but such cases used to be found rarely while now they are recorded quite often. We state that cannibalism in polar bears is increasing.”
According to the researchers, the reason for this behaviour is the shortage of food supply in an already delicate habitat. Large male polar bears are attacking female and cubs — since they’re an easy target.
Normally they hunt on sea ice, feasting on seals. But with ice melting away, the bears are forced to be near the shore where they cannot hunt the usual way.
Human intervention has also severely impacted the habitat. The Gulf of Ob is now being used to extract Arctic Liquid Natural Gas with ships commonly passing through the route.
Another Russian scientist Vladimir Sokolov who has led numerous expeditions in the past stated that Polar Bears this year are also experiencing weather hotter than they’re used to — specifically towards the Spitsbergen Island to the north in Norway.
Many bears have also started to hoard bodies that they’ve killed by burying them in the snow to be consumed later. This phenomenon is called caching and is common in brown bears, but not quite in polar bears.
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