The Rider Of Icebergs

Today is International Polar Bear Day. This holiday was created by Polar Bears International, I believe, in order to raise awareness about the plight of Polar Bears and what we can do to help. Polar Bears are kind of the poster animal for climate change, as their habitat is disappearing  with increasing speed due to the indirect actions of us all. Or, in layman's terms: global warming is melting all the ice. 

Polar bear with cub

I've got a lot of love for polar bears, they are incredible animals. I'm a big fan of bears regardless, but polar bears definitely have a particular charm for me. They live in some of the harshest conditions on the planet, weathering blizzards and freezing temperatures. Perhaps due to the inhospitable landscape, polar bears will eat only meat, in contrast to their predominantly omnivorous cousins. Their hunts are only successful very rarely; sometimes as few as one in fifty hunts resulting in a kill. And yet, despite all of this adversity, they manage to thrive, and sometimes even find playmates in creatures they would otherwise kill;

This is because polar bears are uniquely adapted to their environment. The Latin descriptor for this animal is Ursus Maritimus, which directly translates as sea bear. They are also known around the world as Nanuk, Isbjorn and even, in Norse mythology, the rider of icebergs. Most bears are more than happy to get wet in search of food, but polar bears are the only of their kind that are actually classified as a marine mammal. Their white fur is in fact not white at all, but transparent and hollow - they only appear white due to a trick of light refraction. This fur covers almost all parts of their body, even their paws. Their skin underneath the fur is black, all the better to absorb heat. Polar bears are also pretty smart, being described as highly cognitive creatures with a mental capacity equal to that of an ape.

Polar bear swimming

There are also many myths about polar bears that do not hold up to scrutiny  The widely-held belief that all polar bears are left handed, for example, is completely unsubstantiated. Studies have shown that they use their paws more or less equally. Neither do they use tools to kill their prey, although they have been known to smash blocks of ice into pieces order to get to a fish frozen inside. Finally, polar bears are only to be found in the northerly Arctic regions, and never in the Antarctic regions, which means that they would never cross paths with penguins  who live in the Antarctic. In fact the word Arctic is derived from the Greek word for bear and Antarctic from the Greek for without bear.

Mother with two cubs

So, if you wish to celebrate International Polar Bear Day with me, there are a few ways you can do it. The first is to try and be as green as you can today, as it is climate change that is directly affecting the polar bears habitat, reducing the amount of ice they have to roam and hunt on. As far as I'm concerned, I don't own a car, I can rarely afford to get on a plane and I recycle, so I'm already greener than most of the adult population of Britain by default, but I'll be turning the heating down a bit today and wrapping up a bit warmer instead. If you would like to learn a bit more about polar bears, I thoroughly recommend watching the excellent documentary series Frozen Planet with David Attenborough, or alternatively the hour long Snow Babies which has footage of polar bear cubs ice-skating :) 

Cub attack!