Some polar bears in the Arctic are shedding pounds during the time they should be beefing up, a new study shows. 

It’s the climate change diet and scientists say it’s not good.

They blame global warming for the dwindling ice cover on the Arctic Ocean that bears need for hunting seals each spring.

For their research, the scientists spied on the polar bears by equipping nine female white giants with tracking collars that had video cameras and the bear equivalent of a Fitbit during three recent springs. 

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A new study released on Thursday, Feb. 1, 2018 shows some polar bears in the Arctic are shedding pounds during the time they are supposed to be beefing up. Scientists blame climate change for shrinking the ice cover on the Arctic Ocean that the polar bears need for hunting

The bears also had their blood monitored and were weighed.

What the scientists found is that five of the bears lost weight and four of them lost 2.9 to 5.5 pounds (1.3 to 2.5 kilograms) per day. 

The average polar bear studied weighed about 386 pounds (175 kilograms). One bear lost 51 pounds (23 kilograms) in just nine days.

‘You’re talking a pretty amazing amount of mass to lose,’ said U.S. Geological Survey wildlife biologist Anthony Pagano, lead author of a new study in Thursday’s journal Science.

Researchers studied the bears for 10 days in April, when they are supposed to begin putting on weight so they can later have cubs, feed the cubs and survive through the harsh winter. 

But because the ice is shrinking, the bears are having a harder time catching seal pups even during prime hunting time, Pagano said. 

The United States Fish and Wildlife Service lists polar bears as a threatened species.

Polar bears hunt from the ice. They often wait for seals to pop out of holes to get air and at other times they swim after seals. 

If there is less sea ice and it is broken apart, bears have to travel more – often swimming – and that has serious consequences, such as more energy use, hypothermia and risk of death, said University of Alberta biology professor Andrew Derocher, who wasn’t part of the study.

For their research, the scientists spied on the polar bears by equipping nine female white giants with tracking collars that had video cameras and the bear equivalent of a Fitbit during three recent springs

For their research, the scientists spied on the polar bears by equipping nine female white giants with tracking collars that had video cameras and the bear equivalent of a Fitbit during three recent springs

The study found that on the ice, the polar bears burn up 60 percent more energy than previously thought, based on these first real-life measurements done on the ice. 

A few of the bears travelled more than 155 miles (250 kilometers) in about 10 days off the northern coast of Alaska in the Beaufort Sea, Pagano said. 

The average bear female burned about 13,200 calories a day – six times more than an active human female.

‘Just to break even they have to capture at least one seal every five to 10 days – and that’s just to break even,’ said study co-author George Durner, a USGS research zoologist. 

‘And if they don’t do that they’re going to lose weight.’

The ice cover in the Arctic grows in the winter and melts in the summer. 

WHY DO POLAR BEARS NEED ICE TO SURVIVE?

Loss of ice due to climate change has a direct impact on the ability of polar bears to feed and survive.

The bears need platforms of ice to reach their prey of ringed and bearded seals. Some sea ice lies over more productive hunting areas than others.

Like other predators at the top of the food chain, polar bears have a low reproductive rate. One or two cubs are born in midwinter and stay with their mother for two years. 

Consequently, females breed only every three years. The bears don’t reproduce until they are five or six years old.

From late fall until spring, mothers with new cubs den in snowdrifts on land or on pack ice. They emerge from their dens, with the new cubs, in the spring to hunt seals from floating sea ice.

Simply put, if there isn’t enough sea ice, seals can’t haul out on the ice, and polar bears can’t continue to hunt. 

End of summer measurements of sea ice in the Arctic in September revealed that the region has hit the eighth lowest extent in modern record keeping.

Satellite data showed the Arctic reached its yearly lowest extent on September 13, at 1.79 million square miles (4.64 million square kilometres).

While the Arctic hits its summertime minimum around this time every year, the experts say the extent has been decreasing rapidly as a result of climate change, seeing dramatic declines since the late 1970s.

Because of climate change, the ice is shrinking and thinning more and earlier, he said.

As the ice dwindles, ‘we are essentially pulling the rug out from underneath the polar bears,’ Durner said.

The bear videos showed researchers all sorts of usually private aspects of polar bear life, including courtship and hunting. 

They recorded dramatic, and at times, bloody seal hunts from the bear’s perspective.

‘You’re seeing everything it is seeing,’ Durner said.

What the scientists found is that five of the bears lost weight and four of them lost 2.9 to 5.5 pounds (1.3 to 2.5 kilograms) per day. The average polar bear studied weighed about 386 pounds (175 kilograms). One bear lost 51 pounds (23 kilograms) in just nine days

What the scientists found is that five of the bears lost weight and four of them lost 2.9 to 5.5 pounds (1.3 to 2.5 kilograms) per day. The average polar bear studied weighed about 386 pounds (175 kilograms). One bear lost 51 pounds (23 kilograms) in just nine days

Researchers only tracked female bears because males can’t keep collars on – their heads are too small and their necks too big – Pagano said.

Blaine Griffen, a Brigham Young University biology professor who wasn’t part of the study, praised the USGS work, noting that past studies have looked at resting polar bears and polar bears on treadmills in the lab.

In the long run, climate change ‘will result in smaller bears that produce fewer cubs and that have lower survival rates,’ Griffen said in an email.

All over the Arctic, scientists have seen evidence of weakened polar bears, Pagano said. 

Last month, a video of a starving polar bear went viral, but it is from a different part of the Arctic and unlikely to be related to global warming, Durner said.

‘If it’s bad for polar bears, it might be affecting us in other ways – us being humans,’ Durner said. ‘It’s part of a larger picture.’

 





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