Russian researchers have observed a sudden rise in cases of polar bears attacking and devouring one another due to limited availability of traditional prey like seals.
“We state that cannibalism in polar bears is increasing,” said Ilya Mordvintsev, a polar bear researcher at Moscow’s Severtsov Institute of Problems of Ecology and Evolution, during a presentation. “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,” said Mordvintsev, quoted Interfax news agency.
Thanks to global warming, melting ice and human activity have eroded their habitat. As the ice platforms have vanished, the polar bears find it difficult to hunt seals, their favourite food choice. In their desperation, researchers observed, polar bears devour dolphins, which they had previously ignored.
White polar bear on drifting ice eat a seal, wildlife Svalbard, Norway | Shutterstock
Polar bears locate prey with their powerful sense of smell as seals come to breathe at the ice openings. They patiently wait for the seals to emerge before they dive to catch the seal.
Scientists have also witnessed several troubling signs like increase in the number of dives in search of scanty food. Being at the top of the food chain in the Arctic, the only threat to polar bears are other polar bears. Male bears grow twice the size of females and are generally more aggressive.
There has been a significant rise in the human population in the region. “Now we get information not only from scientists but also from the growing number of oil workers and defence ministry employees,” said Mordvintsev.
Cannibalism is common among many animals like tiger salamanders, hippopotamuses sloth bears, but rarely observed by scientists among polar bears.
In 2016, a crew on board National Geographic Explorer in the Arctic filmed a male polar bear hunting and then eating a polar bear cub despite the mother bear trying to protect it.
Russian scientist, Vladimir Sokolov, told AFP that the warm weather has hit polar bears on Spitsbergen Island to the west in Norway’s Svalbard archipelago. Sokolov, who led many expeditions by the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute, based in Saint Petersburg, observed traditional hunting grounds vanishing due to global warming.
In the last quarter-century, Arctic ice levels by the end of summer have fallen by 40 per cent, according to Sokolov. Polar bears would eventually no longer hunt on sea ice and be confined to shore areas and high-latitude archipelagos.
Russian scientists have cautioned about bears moving away from their lost hunting grounds and encroaching areas of human settlements in the Arctic for food.
