Today we say a polar bear approach the ship. It was roused when we were ice breaking through pack ice. Perhaps thats why it was yawning. According to naturalist Magnus Forsberg, "ice bears" evolved from the brown bear 200-600 thousand years ago. Quite recently, in the past ten years, hybrids between Ice and Brown bears have been found in the wild. This is more evidence that as the climate changes, the species are adapting and also changing. Male ice bears will have 350-650 kg of mass on average, depending on how many seals they can eat. They hibernate much of the year, and need to eat seal blubber for the hibernation season. They will typically only eat seal blubber, leaving much of the meat for scavengers who also depend on bear kills to survive. These include the arctic fox and many bird species.
Bears have been designed to insulate all the heat from escaping. Thermal imagery shows that they lose almost no heat from their coats. In addition, their paws have to be like snowshoes to walk through the various ice, snow and also be able to swim long distances. They toes are webbed and here we see a good look at one of the paws. It was truly amazing to see the bear making tracks.
This curios bear got right up to the bow of the ship for all of us to enjoy.
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