Polar Bear Eats Cub: Cannibalism May Be On The Rise (GRAPHIC PHOTOS)

Cannibalism is not a part of polar bears' M.O. The animals normally refrain from feasting on their own kind.

But desperate times apparently call for quite disturbing measures. Just ask photojournalist Jenny E. Ross.

In July 2010, BBC News reports that Ross witnessed a polar bear killing and eating a cub in the Svalbard archipelago of the Arctic. She recently presented her photos and story at the 2011 American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting, and her paper covering the event has been published in the journal Arctic, co-authored by polar bear specialist Dr. Ian Stirling.

SCROLL DOWN FOR GRUESOME PHOTOS OF THE POLAR BEAR EATING A CUB.

Ross told BBC News that the polar bear killed the cub with sharp bites to the head, and once the bear spotted a boat, he became protective over his meal.

While this isn't the first time that a polar bear has been seen eating a fellow bear, there has been a noticeable increase in occurrences, "particularly on land where polar bears are trapped ashore, completely food-deprived for extended periods of time due to the loss of sea ice as a result of climate change," Ross told BBC News.

In 2009, The Canadian Press reported that witnesses saw up to eight males eating cubs around Churchill, Manitoba, in one season. In the past, the bears were able to travel the iced-over Hudson Bay for food, but in recent years it was taking more time to freeze over. While tourism was considered a possible explanation, experts also considered that there may be a link to climate change.

Center for Biological Diversity's Kassie Siegal blogged on HuffPost about the warmer, increasingly ice-free season in western Hudson Bay, where "the bears now have to contend with ever-increasing periods of fasting on land and shorter periods out on the ice to catch the seals they need to survive. The bears here are smaller and lighter than they used to be, fewer cubs survive, and the population is declining in numbers."

Also in 2009, a video on MSNBC reported that tourists witnessed an adult male polar bear eating a cub. Stirling said in the news report that while polar bear cannibalism always occurred, he was seeing it taking place more often. Recording the rising instances of cannibalism in the Beaufort Sea, he said, "These are things that I had never seen before in the 30 years that I'd worked in that part of the world."

There are certain circumstances under which polar bears do feed on other bears. For example, TIME explains that a polar bear may eat its cubs if they are believed to be sick.

Extenuating cases aside, polar bears usually feed on seals. Ross wrote in Arctic that due to melting sea ice, there are fewer seals for the polar bears to feed on. "As the climate continues to warm in the Arctic and the sea ice melts earlier in the summer, the frequency of such intraspecific predation may increase."

View photos of the polar bear eating a cub, courtesy of Jenny E. Ross.

Comments

[onasphere]

03:05 AM on 09/23/2012

I saw a film on how global warming is causing Polar Bear starvation and cannibalism while in Houston, TX. The audience was annoyed at the global warming talk. Their science museum is half oil drilling technology. The whole place was built with oil money.

[ILoveFiction]

03:05 AM on 12/31/2011

I ask you, what's the latest from the Chuckchi Sea.

First that and now this ...

http://pbsg.npolar.no/en/status/status-table.html

[HP-reader]

04:54 AM on 12/29/2011

In the financial sector it is the same: Royal Bank of Scotland, Deutsche Bank AG, BNP Paribas, HSBC Japan, Goldman Sachs and I&C Bank of China will 'eat up' everything - from subsidiaries to competition.
Only in the States the bankruptcy of the banks in the recent three years is mind-blowing: 2008→ 25 failed banks; 2009 → 140; 2010 → 157; 2011→ 84 (so far).

[GustavoRejivik]

02:26 AM on 12/29/2011

Ugh, perhaps the Polar Bears recognize their ranks are growing too much, overpopulation .. after all .. in the 1950's and 1960's the estimated population was just 5-6k due to over-hunting. Now the population is 20-25k ... so too many Polar Bears limits roaming and food resources...

Perhaps this Polar Bear in the picture wasn't really looking for a meal .. but killing off competition.

http://www.examiner.com/seminole-county-environmental-news-in-orlando/canada-s-growing-polar-bear-population-becoming-a-problem-locals-say

[gallon]

04:38 AM on 12/29/2011

Science says that globally, the population is in decline.

[GustavoRejivik]

09:45 PM on 12/29/2011

Polar Bears don't live "globally" ... they live only in the Arctic ... where their numbers have expanded from 5k in 1950 up to 25k at this point in time...

So I ask you, declining from what? What point in time??

[franluchan]

07:44 PM on 12/28/2011

Shock News : Polar Bear Killed A Seal

http://stevengoddard.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/polar_bear_kills_seal-1.jpg

Who knew those polar bears were such animals!

They're supposed to come and hug you for buying an electric car.

[gallon]

01:18 AM on 12/29/2011

franluchan, whatever happened to Frank Luchan? Oh yeah, it got banned for continuous, rabid posts just like yours.

[dpgaff]

05:28 PM on 12/28/2011

Think twice.....Jesse Ventura...truTV...conspiracy theory...carbon tax...Maurice Strong...world government.

[StephenBP]

02:29 PM on 12/28/2011

Here are some variables to consider. Chemical pollution accumulating in top of the food chain predators like polar bears does not have a positive effect on their populations. Neither does growing numbers of native peoples using guns and snow mobiles to hunt them. All the Arctic countries agreed to limit hunting of polar bears. So basically, the polar bear issue is full of ups and downs that our anti-scientific conservative friendos will use to great advantage.

Anyway, polar bear cannibalism makes for great sensationalist journalism, and it is very possibly a result of global warming, and it is something that Arctic biologists need to keep an eye on.

But without an abundance of scientific evidence, it becomes soft science that the conservatives love to use to make noise, to fool themselves and to give themselves the a false sense of comfort by allowing them to falsely believe that there really is no global warming issue. They then bring out their standard government issue prejudice against government sponsored science, and avoid the real problem. The real problem is that we humans are mucking up their atmosphere through fossil combustion exhaust, and the amount of polar ice is the lowest VOLUME recorded in recent history. And these two events are directly related.

Polar bears are unfortunate but sensational road kill, and just take focus away from the real issue: fossil fuel.

[OcotilloKid]

01:11 PM on 12/28/2011

The bottom line is that about 97% to 98% of climate researchers (if not more) are paid by the government and climate interest groups to support and to advance the global warming hypothesis and come to awful conclusions like polar bear cannibalism....and, guess what? they do.

This doesn’t make these researchers correct or credible, just employed.

[chrisd3]

06:00 PM on 12/28/2011

Your comment is 100% false. They are paid to do research, not to support predefined conclusions. Your comment is an evidence-free slimy smear on thousands of hard-working scientists, and nothing more.

[jimboy71]

08:19 PM on 12/28/2011

You're right. 120% of climatologists get Billions from the Gobmint and Soros to make us socialist.
True fact of science.

[sam15a]

09:09 PM on 12/28/2011

And on just what authoritative source are you basing these "True facts of science"?

[ClimateHawk]

09:38 AM on 12/28/2011

For informative updates about climate issues, see: http://thinkprogress.org/romm/issue/

[ILoveFiction]

05:40 PM on 12/28/2011

Didn't we already say that?

[chrisd3]

05:56 PM on 12/28/2011

"Joe Romm encourages the idea that skeptics will be strangled in their beds"

Not even the ClimateDepot page you linked to says that.

Stop lying.

[Orkneygal]

03:35 AM on 12/29/2011

More about Joe Romm

Here

http://tinyurl.com/bphma4v

And here

http://tinyurl.com/7at4xmx

[gallon]

05:03 AM on 12/29/2011

Orney and all the deniers fear and hate Joe Romm who runs a truthful and wonderful climate science blog.

http://thi­nkprogress­.org/romm/­issue/

[ILoveFiction]

07:25 AM on 12/29/2011

Hah!

More?

Those "new episodes" are just reruns!

I do hope you will get creative and make up some new stories to entertain us.

[StephenBP]

07:55 AM on 12/28/2011

This is classic sensationalism journalism, and an invitation to play "let's you and him fight!".

The polar bear situation is showing evidence of global warming, just like the shrinking glaciers, moving agricultural and ecological zones, just like the global heat balance, just like about every piece of evidence we are accumulating.

However, the polar bear situation is also a ready made trap for nay sayers to cite cherry picked evidence and create a straw dog from the image of soft hearted "liberals" pining for the poor, cuddly-looking man eating carnivores.

Hanging your global warming analysis on anecdotal polar bear evidence is a recipe for getting ambushed. But hey, if you like to fight, go for it.

[OcotilloKid]

01:08 PM on 12/28/2011

Yes...the polar bear population has been on the rise since the 60's due to global warming.

[jimboy71]

08:21 PM on 12/28/2011

Or, hunting bans.

[Publicola]

01:16 PM on 12/29/2011

Let me guess: you're not a scientist, are you.

[StephenBP]

07:31 AM on 12/28/2011

Using the population density and behaviors of difficult to survey white carnivores living in a white environment as a proxy for global temperatures is like estimating the temperature of the previous winter by counting the number of lost mittens found when the snow melts. There is possibly a correlation, but wouldn't it be easier to just measure the temperature with a thermometer?

Where are we going here????

[Orkneygal]

09:47 PM on 12/27/2011

Hmmm, Polar Bear Cannibalism MAY be on the rise and it MAY be caused by all those climate change molecules Al Gore made his now debunked video about.

That also means Polar Bear Cannibalism MAY be on the decline and it MAY have nothing to do with climate change.

[gallon]

01:06 AM on 12/29/2011

Orkney: "Hmmm, Polar Bear Cannibalis­m MAY be on the rise and it MAY be caused by all those climate change molecules Al Gore made his now debunked video about.

That also means Polar Bear Cannibalis­m MAY be on the decline and it MAY have nothing to do with climate change. "


Orkneys knows a lot about cannibalism.

[troothspeeks]

11:36 PM on 12/15/2011

A new US Senate report says:

The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service estimates that the polar bear population is currently at 20,000 to 25,000 bears, up from as low as 5,000-10,000 bears in the 1950s and 1960s
Polar bear numbers in Canada have increased in 11 of 13 regions in recent years.

Another report shows that polar bear encounters on the North Slope oil fields have risen to record levels the last two years. The global warming religionists blame the increase in polar bear sightings on shrinking ice flows. So, now the alarmists are blaming manmade global warming on both increased and decreased polar bear populations.

There are 5 times as many polar bears today as there were 50 years ago…


.

[jimboy71]

04:01 PM on 12/29/2011

And that has nothing to do with the hunting ban?

[troothspeeks]

08:16 PM on 12/29/2011

When a species is threatened they should most definately go on a hunting ban. It does no good to hunt anything to extinction. From what i have seen the japaneses are threatening the whale population and i am all for doing whatever is necessary to ensure their survival. That said I am still a carnivore and feel that as long as you eat what you kill and are not hunting anything endangered its your right to do so.

[Angel Ciudad]

06:57 PM on 12/14/2011

This broke my heart. We are all to blame.
:,(

[jimboy71]

04:00 PM on 12/29/2011

Flagged.

[mtn viking]

12:57 PM on 12/14/2011

This article is tailor made to support the denier premise that climate change data is faked by environmentalists. If that was your goal, Joanna Zelman, then well done.

[Shan Wells]

02:50 PM on 12/14/2011

Amazing how that science keeps telling us stuff you don't want to believe. Think there's a reason?

[mtn viking]

02:56 PM on 12/14/2011

What stuff is science telling me that I don't want to believe? I understand that humans are pressing the accelerator on climate change.

What's amazing is that you believe that an opinion piece, not backed by any science, is going to be more harmful than helpful in convincing undecideds that human caused climate change is real.