Polar Bear Polar Bear Story
Karmen Mcarthun
The other day, our younger daughter Kathy sent us an SOS e-mail from New York, saying she was spooked by something she had read "All I Really Need to Know I Learned By Having My Arms Ripped Off by a Polar Bear" ("The New Yorker," May 20). "Was it really true?" she asked.
I recalled reading that very article and experiencing a similar moment of confusion, given that a woman in Florida had just had her arm ripped off by a lion. So I wasn't prepared for comedy or satire involving arms rudely removed.
On second reading, I realized the author, Andrew Barlow, was taking us on a wicked ride. He begins by saying that wisdom, for him, came not from grad school but during a visit to the home of our trusted friend the polar bear. "Actually, I suppose 'trusted friend' is a misnomer, because last year I had my arms brutally ripped from my torso by a 1,500 pound Norwegian polar bear."
And he ends with "When a male polar bear and a human are face to face, there occurs a brief kind of magic an intense, visceral connection between man and beast whose poignancy and import cannot be expressed in mere words. Then he rips your arms off."
I still wasn't laughing, or probing for deeper meanings, because of the Florida woman but I did recall that New Bedford's own personal guru, Herman Melville, had a little something to say about polar bears, too. In thinking about the "appalling" whiteness of the whale, Moby-Dick, he slips into a meditation on the appalling whiteness of the polar bear -- the irresponsible ferociousness of the creature "invested in the fleece of celestial innocence and love." (This may also be a comment on the white man but, for now, let's let a bear be a bear.)
When local photographer John Robson returned from Alaska where he'd gone to photograph the Eskimo community, he remarked that you couldn't see a polar bear unless the bear was moving. He could be right there on the ice floe, totally disguised, looking at you innocently as he prepared to eat you up. John also told a story about someone leaving his dog chained by the house, returning to find only the chain.
The polar bear story is satire. The title is the first hint. Remember that book, "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten?" The author learned about sharing and respecting others but did not tell us what to do when facing a mugger who dropped out of kindergarten or "was absent that day" when the question of sharing was taught, and so thought that mugging was just a slightly aggressive form of sharing.
Or the polar bear can also be the suicide bombers who apparently didn't go to kindergarten, or dropped out before the lesson on killing large numbers of people. So I think it should be read as a description of the zeitgeist we live in now under various threats of terror.
It's also what working for a very big polar bear named Enron felt like when it stole all your money, including your pension, without so much as a "how-de-do," then put you out to sea on your own private iceberg.
And we strive to ensure healthy populations of polar bears thrive in the short-term. This includes working to protect moms and cubs during the vulnerable denning period and supporting communities to reduce conflict between polar bears and people, focusing on solutions that promote coexistence, allowing bears and people to thrive.
This was my third time in Baffin Island and I had not as yet seen a polar bear. I really wanted to see one. Safely, and from a distance, as all visitors to the Arctic wish. The Inuit too still get excited every time they see a nanok (polar bear in Inuktitut). So there we were at the start of our polar expedition attempting the first British traverse of the Penny Ice Cap, a distance of over 250km, rising from sea level to 2000m and back down again through temperatures below -25C and with winds of upto 70km/h. But first of all we had to get to our starting position.
We traveled past massive icebergs, halted in their voyage south by the freezing seas. They towered storeys above us, dwarfing us in their majesty. We stopped in awe and the silence that followed was deafening. We passed seal holes, where, some way in the distance, a seal was sun bathing. Arctic hares raced past us, somehow managing to maintain the same speed whilst shooting up a 50 degree mountain snow slope. We saw the extraordinarily shapes created by pressure ice as the sea froze, forcing us to weave in and out, up and down, to find the easiest way through. Then we came across the tracks of a mother polar bear and two cubs. The tracks were fresh. I remember putting my hand inside the paw print of the mother polar bear and gulping a little uncomfortably as my hand was swallowed up. We followed the tracks and came across a seal den, where seal babies are nursed. We could see where the polar bears had waited patiently, hoping to catch a seal, and their tracks further away into the distance when they had given up.
Polar bears are both terrestrial and pagophilic (ice-living) and are considered to be marine mammals due to their dependence on marine ecosystems. They prefer the annual sea ice but live on land when the ice melts in the summer. They are mostly carnivorous and specialized for preying on seals, particularly ringed seals. Such prey is typically taken by ambush; the bear may stalk its prey on the ice or in the water, but also will stay at a breathing hole or ice edge to wait for prey to swim by. The bear primarily feeds on the seal's energy-rich blubber. Other prey include walruses, beluga whales and some terrestrial animals. Polar bears are usually solitary but can be found in groups when on land. During the breeding season, male bears guard females and defend them from rivals. Mothers give birth to cubs in maternity dens during the winter. Young stay with their mother for up to two and a half years.
The polar bear is considered to be a vulnerable species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) with an estimated total population of 22,000 to 31,000 individuals. Its biggest threats are climate change, pollution and energy development. Climate change has caused a decline in sea ice, giving the polar bear less access to its favoured prey and increasing the risk of malnutrition and starvation. Less sea ice also means that the bears must spend more time on land, increasing conflicts with people. Polar bears have been hunted, both by native and non-native peoples, for their coats, meat and other items. They have been kept in captivity in zoos and circuses and are prevalent in art, folklore, religion and modern culture.
Carl Linnaeus classified the polar bear as a type of brown bear (Ursus arctos), labelling it as Ursus maritimus albus-major, articus in the 1758 edition of his work Systema Naturae.[8] Constantine John Phipps formally described the polar bear as a distinct species, Ursus maritimus in 1774, following his 1773 voyage towards the North Pole.[4][9] Due to its adaptations to a marine environment, some taxonomists like Theodore Knottnerus-Meyer have placed the polar bear in its genus Thalarctos.[10][11] However Ursus is widely considered to be the valid genus for the species based on the fossil record and the fact that it can breed with the brown bear.[11][12]
Different subspecies have been proposed including Ursus maritimus maritimus and U. m. marinus.[a][13] However these are not supported and the polar bear is considered to be monotypic.[14] One possible fossil subspecies, U. m. tyrannus, was posited in 1964 by Bjrn Kurtn, who reconstructed the subspecies from a single fragment of an ulna which was approximately 20 percent larger than expected for a polar bear.[12] However, re-evaluation in the 21st century has indicated that the fragment likely comes from a giant brown bear.[15][16]
Fossils of polar bears are uncommon.[12][15] The oldest known fossil is a 130,000- to 110,000-year-old jaw bone, found on Prince Charles Foreland, Norway, in 2004.[20][1] Scientists in the 20th century surmised that polar bears directly descended from a population of brown bears, possibly in eastern Siberia or Alaska.[12][15] Mitochondrial DNA studies in the 1990s and 2000s supported the status of the polar bear as a derivative of the brown bear, finding that some brown bear populations were more closely related to polar bears than to other brown bears, particularly the ABC Islands bears of Southeast Alaska.[20][21][22] A 2010 study estimated that the polar bear lineage split from other brown bears around 150,000 years ago.[20]
More extensive genetic studies have refuted the idea that polar bears are directly descended from brown bears and found that the two species are separate sister lineages. The genetic similarities between polar bears and some brown bears were found to be the result of interbreeding.[23][24] A 2012 study estimated the split between polar and brown bears as occurring around 600,000 years ago.[23] A 2022 study estimated the divergence as occurring even earlier at over one million years ago.[24] Glaciation events over hundreds of thousands of years led to both the origin of polar bears and their subsequent interactions and hybridizations with brown bears.[25]
Studies in 2011 and 2012 concluded that gene flow went from brown bears to polar bears during hybridization.[23][26] In particular, a 2011 study concluded that living polar bear populations derived their maternal lines from now-extinct Irish brown bears.[26] Later studies have clarified that gene flow went from polar to brown bears rather than the reverse.[25][27][28] Up to 9 percent of the genome of ABC bears was transferred from polar bears,[29] while Irish bears had up to 21.5 percent polar bear origin.[27] Mass hybridization between the two species appears to have stopped around 200,000 years ago. Modern hybrids are relatively rare in the wild.[24]
Analysis of the number of variations of gene copies in polar bears compared with brown bears and American black bears shows distinct adaptions. Polar bears have a less diverse array of olfactory receptor genes, a result of there being fewer odours in their Arctic habitat. With its carnivorous, high-fat diet the species has fewer copies of the gene involved in making amylase, an enzyme that breaks down starch, and more selection for genes for fatty acid breakdown and a more efficient circulatory system. The polar bear's thicker coat is the result of more copies of genes involved in keratin-creating proteins.[30]
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