
Caring, sharing bears
Good seal hunting amongst the brash ice brings polar bears together.
Brash ice created from the glacier calving, is a great place to search for polar bears. They’ll hunt in here. They can’t hunt on the bits of brash ice because they are too small, but they use the ice as a hunting platform. They’ll swim up to seals and as long as the seal’s a bit dozy on the ice, the bears will come up with explosive power on to the ice and grab the seal. They actually swim at about four knots. A young bear is visible on an ice floe. It has cream fur, so stands out on the blue ice. It goes to show that it actually makes sense to hunt here because he’s got a big bearded seal - a lot of good eating. Another bear closes in on the young male. He’s picked up the scent and is heading straight for the kill. This fully mature adult male means business. If the youngster doesn’t give way, this could really kick off. Luckily the youngster seems to know his place and retreats to the edge of the ice. He must be desperate as he’s going back for more! That’s an extraordinary sight - you very rarely see two unrelated males sharing food. There must be plenty of food here. These two bears, big, fat and healthy, are quite comfortably eating side by side. Male polar bears are huge - twice the size of a tiger- not only the biggest bear in the world, but the biggest land carnivore on Earth.
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