92 Fun Facts About Polar Bear

What is the scientific name for the polar bear?

Ursus maritimus is Latin for 'sea bear', a fitting name for a bear that spends most of its life out on the frozen ocean, hunting from the ice and swimming between floes.

Explorers looking for wild polar bears would search in vain in which icy region?

Antarctica has no bears of any kind; polar bears live only around the Arctic Ocean, so in the wild they never cross paths with penguins, which live almost entirely in the Southern Hemisphere.

What color is a polar bear's skin underneath its fur?

Black skin soaks up the heat of the sunlight that reaches it through the coat, helping the bear stay warm in the Arctic cold.

Polar bears feed primarily on which part of the seals they catch?

Polar bears eat the blubber first and often abandon the rest of the carcass; a seal's fat layer packs far more calories than its muscle or organs.

What is an adult female polar bear called?

An adult female polar bear is a sow and a male is a boar, the same names used for pigs; the sow raises her cubs entirely on her own, with no help from the boar.

What conservation status did the 2015 IUCN Red List assessment give the polar bear?

Vulnerable sits one step below Endangered on the Red List; assessors expect numbers to fall as Arctic ice shrinks, yet the species' overall population trend is still officially listed as unknown.

Unlike many other bear species, polar bears generally do NOT do what during the winter months?

Most polar bears do not hibernate. Only pregnant females will enter a maternity den to give birth and nurse their cubs, while other polar bears remain active and continue hunting seals on the sea ice.

The 1973 Agreement on the Conservation of Polar Bears outlawed hunting the bears from which vehicles?

Aircraft and icebreakers were ruled out as the most damaging ways to hunt; the treaty, signed by all five polar bear nations, still lets local people hunt by traditional methods.

Which animal routinely follows polar bears to scavenge scraps from their kills?

Arctic foxes routinely trail polar bears far out over the ice because a bear often eats only part of a seal and abandons the rest, leaving the foxes a meal.

What specialized feature do polar bear paws have that helps them grip ice and avoid slipping?

Small bumps on the pads, called papillae, grip the ice, while the paws' great width spreads the bear's weight so that it can walk across thin ice.

Which giant subspecies of brown bear rivals the polar bear in size?

The Kodiak bear can match a polar bear's bulk, but it spends more time eating grass, plants and berries than meat, while the polar bear lives almost entirely on seals.

Knut, the hand-reared celebrity polar bear cub, lived at the zoo of which city?

Knut lifted Berlin Zoo's attendance by about 30 percent in 2007, the most profitable year in its history; he died in 2011, aged four, after collapsing into his pool in front of visitors.

Which of these countries is one of the five 'polar bear range states'?

Norway, through Svalbard, is one of the five range states alongside Canada, Denmark (for Greenland), Russia and the United States; Iceland is not, though bears occasionally drift there on sea ice.

How do polar bears often sit out a fierce Arctic storm?

They let the snow cover them, sometimes in a shallow bed or shelter they dig first, and may stay put for hours or even days until the weather clears.

Polar bear fur looks white, but what are the individual guard hairs actually like?

Clear and hollow hairs with no pigment scatter incoming light, which is what makes the coat look white; the hollow guard hairs also trap heat and help the bears float.

Polar bear mothers most often give birth to what?

Twins are the usual litter; the mother nurses both cubs in the den for months without eating or drinking anything herself.

Which of these features does a polar bear have that helps it hold in body heat?

Small, rounded ears lose less heat and are less likely to get frostbitten, and the bear's tail is short and compact for the same reason.

Roughly how many polar bears did the IUCN's 2015 assessment estimate worldwide?

About 26,000 is the estimate, within a range of 22,000 to 31,000; polar bears roam such remote ice that for many populations there is too little data to say whether numbers are rising or falling.

A 2011 study traced living polar bears' maternal lines to extinct bears of which country?

A 2011 study traced the maternal line to extinct brown bears of Ireland, but later genome work reversed the story: the DNA flowed from polar bears into the Irish bears when their ranges met in the last ice age.

Pregnant polar bears usually dig their maternity dens at what time of year?

Autumn, usually October or November, is when a pregnant female digs in; she will not come out again until her cubs are strong enough to walk, some months into the new year.

Which of these is the polar bear's main technique for catching seals from winter into early spring?

Waiting still at breathing holes can take hours; when a seal finally surfaces for air, the bear hooks it with its claws and hauls it out onto the ice.

About how long does a polar bear cub stay with its mother before going solo?

About 2.5 years is typical: cubs learn to hunt by watching and copying their mother, and she cannot breed again while she is still nursing them.

What role do a polar bear's back legs play while it swims?

They steer like rudders, held flat behind the body, while the big front paws do all the paddling; a bear can keep this up steadily for hours to reach distant ice.

Polar bears are the only bears that US law and scientists class as what?

Marine mammals include whales, seals and just one bear: the polar bear gets nearly all its food from the sea, so US law protects it under the same act as whales and dolphins.

Polar bears prefer sea ice lying over which kind of seabed, where seals are plentiful?

Polar bears favour annual sea ice over the shallow continental shelf, where seals are most abundant; the deep central Arctic basin holds far fewer seals and bears.

Polar bears are considered the largest extant species of what kind of animal by body mass?

Land carnivore is the polar bear's title only because of the word 'land': the southern elephant seal, a sea-going carnivore, can weigh several times as much.

In which 2016 animated film does a talking polar bear sail to New York to save his Arctic home?

Norm of the North sends its polar bear hero to New York to stop luxury condos being built in the Arctic; it scored just 6 percent on Rotten Tomatoes yet still spawned three sequels.

In 2008, a radio-collared female polar bear swam without stopping across open water for about how long?

About 9 days and 687 km: over the two months she was tracked, the bear grew much thinner, and the yearling cub that had set out with her disappeared.

What term describes 'ice-loving' animals, like polar bears, that depend on sea ice?

Pagophilic animals need the ice itself, not just the cold: the label also fits the seals polar bears hunt, which rest and give birth on it.

Which type of seal is the most commonly taken prey of polar bears?

Ringed seals are the most commonly taken prey for polar bears. They are abundant and small enough to be overpowered by even smaller bears.

A big adult male polar bear typically weighs about how much?

About 500 kg (1,100 lb) is typical for an adult male, roughly twice a female's usual weight, though a pregnant female fattening up for the den can come close to it.

What do pregnant polar bears mainly dig into to make their maternity dens?

Snowdrifts are the usual choice: the mother tunnels into a bank where snow has piled up, and the packed snow insulates so well that the den stays far warmer than the air outside.

Which US law gave the polar bear new protection in 2008?

The Endangered Species Act listed the bear as threatened because the ice it hunts from is melting, not because of hunting, which the US had already restricted in 1972.

On their meat-and-fat diet, polar bears carry few copies of the gene for which enzyme?

Amylase, the enzyme in saliva that breaks down starch, is encoded by a gene polar bears carry in fewer copies than brown bears; most of the genes that changed in number shrank in copy count as the bears turned to meat.

Compared with its closest relative, the polar bear has a more slender build, a narrower skull and a longer what?

The polar bear's neck is longer than that of other bears, helping it keep its head above water when swimming; its teeth are also more carnivorous, with longer canines and smaller cheek teeth.

What do most polar bears live on during the ice-free months they spend ashore?

Their own stored fat carries them through: bears ashore mostly fast for months, and the berries, eggs and grasses some nibble add little real nourishment.

Polar bears have a less diverse set of which sensory receptor genes than other bears?

Polar bears carry a less diverse set of olfactory (smell) receptor genes, likely because the Arctic holds few odours; even so, a bear can locate a seal's snow-covered lair from a distance.

Roughly a third of polar bear milk is made up of what?

Fat makes up roughly a third of polar bear milk; fed on it, a cub multiplies its birth weight about 15-fold before it leaves the den.

How does a male polar bear usually find a mate across miles of sea ice?

By following her scented tracks: a female's paws leave scent in every footprint, so a male can trail her across the ice long before he ever sees her.

Besides seals, which large sea animals do polar bears occasionally hunt, especially the young?

Walruses are risky prey: bears mostly go after calves, because an adult's bulk and tusks are enough to injure or even kill a polar bear.

About how much does a newborn polar bear cub weigh?

About 600 g (1.3 lb) is all a newborn weighs: blind and helpless, it is smaller than a human baby, yet its mother may be several hundred times heavier.

Southeast Greenland's polar bears hunt from what in place of sea ice?

Glacier ice gives these bears a year-round hunting platform of freshwater ice in their fjords; scientists proposed them in 2022 as the world's 20th polar bear subpopulation, a hint of how some bears might cope with less sea ice.

Though mostly solitary, adult male polar bears have been seen doing what together outside the mating season?

Play-wrestling as regular companions is well documented: males have formed friendships lasting weeks or even years, travelling, resting and eating together.

Which of these land animals might a polar bear occasionally prey upon when food is scarce ashore?

Reindeer are occasionally killed and eaten by polar bears ashore, though few cases are known; land food matters most in the far south of the bears' range, where the ice melts completely every summer.

A polar bear's layer of body fat can be up to about how thick?

About 10 cm (4 in) of fat lies under the skin as both insulation and fuel; it works so well that an active bear can overheat and has to cool off with a swim.

Which Arctic whale do polar bears sometimes kill when it is trapped in ice openings?

Polar bears kill beluga whales stuck at small breathing holes in the ice, and they are strong enough to haul the carcass a good distance across the ice afterwards.

Manitoba's 'Polar Bear Capital of the World' has no road link, so besides flying, how do visitors get there?

By train: the present town grew up around the railway terminal that opened in 1929, and the line is still the only way in overland.

Which Canadian jurisdiction introduced polar-bear-shaped licence plates in 1970?

The Northwest Territories introduced the bear-shaped plate in 1970 to mark the territory's centennial; Nunavut kept using the design after it split away in 1999.

What do the Inuit call the polar bear?

Nanook is the Inuit name for the bear and, in Inuit mythology, the master of all bears; the 1922 film Nanook of the North borrowed it for its star, whose real name was Allakariallak.

Which Manitoba town is nicknamed the 'Polar Bear Capital of the World'?

Churchill lies on a route polar bears take every year, so bear-watching has become the mainstay of a remote town once known mainly for its grain port.

Polar bear liver is dangerous to eat because it is loaded with which nutrient?

Vitamin A builds up in a polar bear's liver to 10 to 20 times the level found in most animals; the Inuit never eat it, and Arctic explorers who did fell severely ill.

Beyond Svalbard's settlements, what are people advised to carry as a last resort against bears?

A firearm is the last resort: visitors are told never to leave Svalbard's settlements without deterrents to scare a bear off first, and are urged to travel with local guides.

Which Canadian coin, introduced in 1996, carries a polar bear on its reverse?

The two-dollar coin, the toonie, debuted in 1996 with Brent Townsend's polar bear on the reverse; the bimetallic coin replaced the paper two-dollar bill, which was withdrawn the same year.

In warm zoos, what can turn a polar bear's fur green?

Algae growing inside its hairs are to blame: in warm conditions they build up in the core of the outer guard hairs, a puzzle solved by a 1979 study of zoo bears that had turned green.

Up to about how long can a polar bear live in the wild?

About 30 years is the upper limit in the wild, and few bears reach it; in zoos the oldest have lived past 40.

Gus, the Central Park Zoo polar bear who swam compulsively, was famously treated with which drug?

Gus was put on Prozac after he began swimming figure-eights for up to 12 hours a day in 1994; the zoo also paid a behaviourist $25,000, who ordered an enrichment programme to keep him busy.

Bears locked in Manitoba's 'polar bear jail' are released when what happens?

Hudson Bay freezes over and the bears are released; until then they are held for up to 30 days at a time, and many are sedated and flown by helicopter far from town.

Aurora, the giant polar bear marionette paraded at climate protests, was built by which group?

Greenpeace built Aurora, a polar bear puppet the size of a double-decker bus, for its 2013 Save the Arctic march in London; WWF took a cuddlier route, selling plush bears for its 'Arctic Home' campaign.

Why does Greenland's coat-of-arms bear break heraldic tradition with the paw it raises?

Greenland's bear raises its left forepaw because Inuit lore holds that polar bears are left-handed, a change adopted with the 1989 arms; the same bear in Denmark's royal arms raises its right.

At whale carcasses on Alaska's north coast, polar bears usually back down to which smaller but pushier animal?

The grizzly bear is smaller but socially dominant: at whale remains left by local hunters, polar bears were more likely to be driven from the food by a grizzly than by another polar bear.

Who voiced the armoured bear Iorek Byrnison in the 2007 film The Golden Compass?

Ian McKellen was a late replacement: Nonso Anozie had originally been cast as Iorek, and went on to voice the bear in the tie-in video game instead.

Which classic Hollywood star famously posed on a polar bear rug?

Marilyn Monroe's pin-up photographs lounging on a white polar bear rug became iconic; centuries earlier such rugs covered the floors of Scandinavian churches.

About how long can a polar bear stay underwater on a single dive?

About 3 minutes is the longest dive on record; bears swim underwater like this to stalk seals lying at the edge of an ice floe.

Over a short charge, about how fast can a polar bear run?

40 km/h (25 mph) is the estimate for a short charge, as in the final rush at a seal; a polar bear's usual gait is a slow, lumbering walk.

In 2011, Canada listed the polar bear under its Species at Risk Act with which status?

Canada listed the polar bear as a species of special concern under the Species at Risk Act in November 2011, the lowest at-risk category, following COSEWIC's 2008 assessment.

Polar bears mostly mate during which months?

March to May is mating season out on the ice; once a male finds a female, the pair stay together for about two weeks.

A stalking polar bear keeps its head low, possibly to hide which giveaway?

A stalking bear keeps its head low, possibly to hide its dark nose and eyes against the ice; once close enough it charges, racing to reach the seal before it slips into its hole.

In 2019, 50-plus polar bears swarming a town forced an emergency in which Russian archipelago?

Novaya Zemlya's state of emergency was declared in February 2019 after 52 bears were counted around the main settlement, Belushya Guba, where they were filmed feeding at the rubbish dump.

Which future admiral, a teenage midshipman on Phipps's 1773 Arctic voyage, is said to have hunted a polar bear for its skin?

Horatio Nelson, then 14, is said to have gone after the bear to bring its skin home to his father; his musket misfired, and a gun fired from the ship scared the animal off.

Denned up for winter, a pregnant polar bear does what with her bodily waste?

Recycles it internally: a denning mother can go as long as eight months without eating, drinking, urinating or defecating, all while giving birth and nursing her cubs.

Coca-Cola's first polar bear advertisement, in 1922, ran in which country?

The first Coca-Cola polar bear appeared in a 1922 print advertisement in France, squirting Coke into the mouth of a thirsty, anthropomorphised sun; the famous animated bears arrived in 1993.

What is the soft, pulsing call that polar bear mothers and cubs use with one another?

Chuffing comes out through a half-open mouth rather than the nostrils, unlike a tiger's chuff; courting males make the same call to females, and nursing cubs hum instead.

Binky, the Anchorage zoo polar bear who mauled two visitors in 1994, was photographed holding what?

A tourist's shoe stayed with Binky for three days after he mauled an Australian visitor who had climbed two safety rails for a close-up photo; the picture ran in almost every press report.

In His Dark Materials, the armoured bears' armour, which they regard as their soul, is made of what?

The panserbjørne forge their armour from meteoric iron, 'sky-iron', and regard it as their soul; they have opposable thumbs and no dæmons, and Iorek repairs the Subtle Knife without specialist tools.

Which Welsh naturalist gave the polar bear its English name in A Synopsis of Quadrupeds (1771)?

Thomas Pennant coined 'polar bear' in 1771; Linnaeus had filed the animal as a mere variety of brown bear, and it was only described as a species in its own right three years later.

The oldest known polar bear fossil, a jawbone found in 2004, is roughly how old?

About 120,000 years: the jawbone, dated to 110,000 to 130,000 years ago, yielded DNA that sits almost exactly where the polar bear and brown bear lines branch apart.

What tint does a polar bear's white coat often take on by late summer?

Yellow tones build up as sunlight oxidises the fur and oils from the bear's seal diet stain it; the coat comes back white after the yearly moult.

Polar bears are especially prone to which parasitic roundworm, picked up through cannibalism?

Trichinella larvae lodge in muscle, so bears pick the worm up by eating infected bears; people can catch it the same way from undercooked polar bear meat.

Debby, certified by Guinness as the world's oldest polar bear at 41, lived at a zoo in which city?

Debby lived at Winnipeg's Assiniboine Park Zoo from 1967 until her death in 2008; her favourite treats included veggie dogs and smoked goldeye, and a statue of her at the zoo contains some of her ashes.

The first DNA-confirmed wild polar bear hybrid was shot in 2006 on which Arctic island, named for Captain Cook's botanist?

Banks Island was where an American hunter shot the odd-looking bear near Sachs Harbour; DNA tests showed its mother was a polar bear, and more hybrids from the same family have turned up since.

The Tower of London housed a white bear, probably a polar bear, from 1252 under which king?

Henry III was given the bear in 1252 by King Haakon IV, and the following year ordered that it be let out to swim in the River Thames, where it became a popular sight.

Edwin Landseer's 1864 painting of two polar bears amid Arctic expedition wreckage is titled what?

Man Proposes, God Disposes (1864) imagines the fate of Franklin's lost expedition, bears tearing at a ship's remains; it hangs at Royal Holloway, University of London, where it is covered with a flag during student exams.

Wapusk National Park, a key polar bear denning area, takes its name for 'white bear' from which language?

Wapusk comes from the Cree word for white bear; the Manitoba park was created in 1996 to protect one of the world's largest polar bear maternity denning areas.

Which Russian island, 'island of polar bears' in Chukchi, has the world's highest density of dens?

Wrangel Island, Umqilir in Chukchi, hosts the world's densest concentration of maternity dens; it straddles the 180th meridian, so the International Date Line bends around it to keep the island on Russian time.

Which abolitionist author sailed on the 1773 Arctic voyage that first described the polar bear for science?

Olaudah Equiano sailed on the Racehorse, helping a doctor distil drinking water from seawater, years before he wrote his famous autobiography.

Some taxonomists once placed the polar bear in its own genus, called what?

Thalarctos was dropped because the fossil record and the bear's ability to breed with brown bears both pointed to Ursus as its true genus.

Polar bear cubs are born many months after mating because the fertilised egg first does what?

It delays implanting in the womb for months, so although pregnancy seems to last about eight months, the cubs really develop in only about two.

Apart from adult male polar bears, which predator is known to kill polar bear cubs?

Wolves have been recorded killing polar bear cubs on at least two occasions, working as a pack; a healthy adult polar bear, by contrast, has no natural predator.

Which cartoon voice legend growled as Carmichael, Jack Benny's pet polar bear, on radio?

Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny, played Carmichael along with Benny's parrot and his wheezing Maxwell car, a part he first improvised when a sound recording failed to play.

Evidence of people hunting polar bears on Siberia's Zhokhov Island goes back roughly how far?

About 8,000 years: animal bones at a Stone Age camp there show that polar bears were one of the two animals its people chiefly lived on.

Which 1539 map, possibly the first to show a polar bear, places one on Iceland?

Carta marina vanished for centuries until a copy turned up in a Munich library in 1886; a second, found 75 years later, is now in Uppsala.

In 1609, sailor Jonas Poole gave two polar bear cubs from Svalbard to which monarch?

Jonas Poole, sailing for the Muscovy Company, brought two polar bear cubs from Svalbard to James VI and I in 1609, six years after James's accession to the English throne.