Why Polar Bears are Such Weird Animals
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 21 ธ.ค. 2023
- Polar bears are so famous that we sometimes forget that they are actually incredibly unusual animals. From the amount of time they evolve in to the way they live, there is very little about polar bears that could be considered as normal. This video explains what it takes for bears to live in such an extreme part of the world.
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Sources:
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas....
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1...
www.researchgate.net/publicat...
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1...
Polar Bears truly gained my respect when I sat down and truly thought about how badly inhospitable the arctic is for most lifeforms. Not only they have to live in perpetually cold conditions, but they often have to dive into icy cold waters in order to catch their prey. It’s just insane all around, they’re some of the toughest veterans on the planet!
Polar bears would probably think that we are pretty extreme living in "intolerable" heat all the time.
It's ironic you call them veterans because they are one of the youngest large animals species ,
True holocene animals ...
Check out Snow Leopard hunting.
@@theobserver9131 populations are growing southwards. Its a long way until being inhospitable to them
what about these black bears then that can survive arctic and hot? how superhuman are they?
Something you didn’t mention is how they have adapted the ability to reduce reflection from the sun on the ice. When you look at a massive ice sheet and it’s glistening like a flashlight on a mirror and you won’t be able to see anything out there, but polar bears have some sort of extra layer on their eyes that eliminates that reflection so they can see everything. It helps them stay hidden and hunt because their prey can’t see them because of the reflection, but the polar bear can always see it’s prey.
Omg polar bears have POLARizing eyes?!
Anti Snow Blindness!
Damn
Just shows how versatile Bears are in general when it comes to adapting
All life on earth has to be good at adapting, that’s fundamental to life, it’s just that the ancient polar bear relatives happened to have traits that suited a novel environment, and those that didn’t inherit those traits died without reproducing
Some pretty much just do the same thing generation after generation. Such as many island species.
@@XavierAway
@@XavierAway all life isn’t good at adapting many are just specialized and its why we have extinctions. Bears are far more versatile than most animals at their size and being able to evolve into polar bears as fast as they did despite there size gestation period and diet demonstrates this. Also you could’ve just said ancient bears traits were naturally selected for their environment 🤣.
No bears in Africa, unfortunately
@@UniDocs_Mahapushpa_Cyavana so? That’s because environmental conditions stayed the same, if they didn’t, and conditions became more adverse, the population would bottleneck and the ones that happened to have the trait that allows them to survive the new conditions would continue reproducing…
My favorite polar bear behavior is an ambush technique they use on the sea ice. When waiting at a breathing hole they place a paw in front of their big black nose to camouflage it from seals.
How do they know they have a black nose???
@@louisasmiles probably just evolved or learned behavior because it makes them more successful
They look in the mirror@@louisasmiles
Might be just a legend. I've heard it, too, but who has seen it?
@@ulalaFrugilega I read about the behavior years ago, I can't remember what the source was.
It is crazy that humans might be older species than polar bears
eh. hey are basically bears with few adaptations
Homo sapiens just have some luck by exterminating Neanderthal, Denisovans, etc to stay older
Anatomically modern humans (could be raised today and there be no way to tell difference) are about 150k years old. There's got to be other species that are newer.
@@rickwrites2612lots
@@rickwrites2612just prior to that, what were they looking like? A little more chimpy? 😂
I was confused to learn that brown bears were the biggest land predator, because polar bears were bigger, but polar bears aren't land mammals, it turns out.
Also polar bears are really a subspecies of brown bears it seems
@@diabl2masterNot a subspecies of Brown bears, they are genetically different and are two full species (for now😉). Brown bear is (Ursus arctos), Polar bear is (Ursus maritimus) so only the same genus (Ursus). Subspecies would be the like the Eurasian brown bear (Ursus arctos arctos), and the American brown bear (Ursus arctos horribilis), first word in the scientific name name is genus, second is species, third is subspecies.
Personally i don't consider them marine mammals, maybe semi marine at a push, they spend there life at "sea" on ice. When ice is thin or non existent they are forced back to land, not a issue for other true marine mammals, cubs aren't really adapted to sea live and when there is very little ice they often drown trying to follow there mother, personally imo there's still to much ground reliance (in there case ice) to be called true marine mammals, as due to lack of ice they are being pushed back onto land, not further out to sea.
@@zebedeemadness2672 The problem is what kind of species definition? If the polar bears are a monophyletic clade, that would imply the grouping of brown bears in paraphyletic. At the least, you would have to separate brown bears into one or more extant species, and a ancient chronospecies that disappeared at the time of the speciation event that led to polar bears.
@@fbkintanar It's based on genetic and morphological data, they aren't the same species only the same genus, genetics done on Brown bears puts all Brown bears as the same species with subspecies, Brown bears with minor morphological or genetic differences are split into subspecies, with subspecies being below species but above locality, meaning they are potentially on there way to becoming full species given the right chacges (genetic isolation, environment etc) to allow them to evolve into a full species, as of what's already with the Polar bears, that was once ancestrally a Brown bear locality, then a subspecies, now a full species.
So in other words, they're actual *SEA BEARS*
there's something utterly terrifying in the dissonance on polar bear's almost innocent looking black round eyes and cute face and the fact that they are the only bear species who commonly hunt humans upon encounter. if i ever saw one i would truly have to hold myself not to pat them.
The domestication of European people’s has been a disaster to mankind. You’re like neotenous dogs, incapable of recognising danger and distancing yourselves from it. Something I see other equatorial races are innately capable of due to coevolving with megafauna to modernity.
@@kiuk_kiks oh look it's the spirit of Christmas
@@Eye_Exist
I just love biology, and evolutionary psychology. It’s a peculiarity I’ve learned about people go European and even north East Asian people. You as a people have no real fear of animals, despite their size. Equatorial people are though, speaking in generalities.
@@kiuk_kiks 😎👍
My best friend felt the same way about panda bears until I reminded her that it was indeed a bear by showing her a picture of its mouth/teeth. That cured her real quick!
Amazing to think that in a hypothetical world they could go a mega seal-like evolutionary route eventually
I'm hoping they evolve wings
I feel like it's almost a guarantee some offshoot of them do become more and more aquatic. They can already swim large distances, withstand cold water temps with blubber and hunt aquatic life. It may not even happen in the artic maybe some branch of them travel south along the shallows of the sea for some time
i dont think polar bears can do that for the same reason penguins have stayed in the antarctic for so many years. I think its something like 150m years penguins have existed for and not once have they reached the arctic@@kozmikhero6749
@@kozmikhero6749 it is very unlikely for polar bears to turn fully aquatic anytime soon, this is because the ocean is a dessert with it's life underground and the perfect disguise above. which is an issue because polar bears can't actually drink salt water, they'd have to move into rivers, which are rarely deep enough for a polar bear to swim in full time.
@@windhelmguard5295 Never thought I'd see a reference to Horse With No Name on a video about polar bears...
Such beautiful creatures. I know, dangerous, hunts humans, all that... but just look at the damn thing! Truly majestic. It is no wonder they are such large targets of conservation efforts.
It is sad that they will become extinct in the wild this century, probably in my lifetime. They need long periods with sea ice to get enough calories each year and on land the brown bears habitat is taking over where polar bears once thrived.
Believe it or not there is a video, I believe from Churchill in Canada, of polar bears “playing” with domesticated dogs.
th-cam.com/video/JE-Nyt4Bmi8/w-d-xo.htmlsi=JkvBKE2kO7ck4581
Its a gigant. They are hjuge, most just dont realize this because the glaciers and seas are even hjuger.
@@ryuuguu01 An animal that relies on sea ice was always doomed as the earths climate has and always will change from hot to cold and back again. Still sad though non the less. I assume the remaining species will be forced inland and will breed with grizzles.
@@yogaflame7884 True the sun will eventually expand out to envelope the earth destroying all life and dooming so really nothing you do matters.
There is an extinct subspecies of Polar Bear called Ursus maritimus tyrannus that lived in Britain during the Late Pleistocene. It was found from a single ulna bone near Kew Bridge, London. The ulna itself measured 48.5 cm long which is bigger than modern Polar Bear (36-43 cm). However, some scientists have disputed its existence as the bone might belong to a Brown Bear rather than Polar Bear. But based on its size, it was still a relatively large species of unknown bear.
Cool info, thabks for sharing 👌
Why would they think it was a brown bear ulna when polar bears are larger than brown bears? That seems silly to me. On average, brown bear ulnas are 24-31 cm, while polar bear ulnas measure 36-43 cm as you mentioned.
@@MesozoicZac Some of them think the measurement is exaggerated.
@@MesozoicZacthe difference in size isn’t nearly enough to justify the bear being closer to brown bears than polar bears or vice versa. An analysis of its adaptations to water would be a more reliable way
@@MesozoicZacthat's like saying Rock Hyraxes are more closely related to squirrels because of their size when their closest evolutionary relatives are elephants.
Or saying that the evolutionary ancestors of whales and dolphins are seals or sharks when it's a hoofed animal.
If they don't go extinct, they'll evolve into whales.
or start swimming south
It’s so cruel how cute and fluffy and cuddly and adorable they look. Every instinct to hug them is activated.
That's all bears. The crazy part is most of the time they don't even seem aggressive until they knock you down, put a heavy paw on your chest, and start chewing away at you while you scream. They are nonchalant even when they're killing you. The complete opposite of big cats.
Unless you are 15 feet tall, with appropriate musculature, I wouldn't try it :)
@@T1OracleChad Bear vs Virgin Big Cat
You won’t want to hear hug once you smell the carnivore
Careful you'll get floofed to death!
Dude, I really wish your videos were one hour long.
I also wish I would be in a better financial situation so as to reward your great job as it deserves
Same
I used to think this about a lot of creators then I just started making small donations. If everyone that thought this would just make the effort to a $2-5 contribution it would more then likely make a big difference for theses guys. Probably the difference between needing a “day job” and full time “creator”. You can normally set up monthly contributions of $2. Which seems so small but when they have “X” amount guaranteed it makes it twice a valuable. Just some of my thoughts about donating. I’ve started setting up monthly contributions of $2-5. For about 8 creators, I know it helps them a lot more than I miss less the $40.
@@txkoutdoorfam6911nigga get a savings wtf
I know right, think about how much information he cut or simplified that we could enjoy instead 😁
In Finnish we call them Jääkarhu. Jää = Ice, Karhu = Bear. I think that that name fits them well too.
most of Europe call them Icebears
is karhu a common name for people? i know a trackmania player named karhu whos finnish, and i also know bjorn is a common name in scandinavia, so is karhu a name too?
@@shadoww7301 Karhu is not a common name at least to humans. There's a very popular beer brand named Karhu though and also a company that makes sports gear (They were the ones who came up with the 3 stripes that Adidas uses).
Also using Karhu as a nick name for things is not too uncommon.
@@shadoww7301 Karhu is not a popular name for people, but Otso, which means the same thing, is relatively popular name.
In Kurdish we call them Wirçê Sipî (white bear)
One of the best channel on TH-cam, thank you for this excellent content, rigorously scientific, and extremely compelling
What I've wondered but have never found an answer to: Surely the appearance of this totally novel way of life would have caused many species to go extinct? I would think there would have been a lot of seal species that couldn't handle the ice suddenly turning from a safe haven to a feeding ground.
Quite a possible theory although as stated in the vid many fossils and non fossil remains are lost to the ocean so we may never know
Most animals in the wild will find themselves in an equilibrium with their surroundings. Polar bears simply couldn't spread if there wasn't enough food in the food chain.
@@ingvarhallstrom2306 Which isn't the same thing as every species living in harmony, nothing driving anything else extinct.
Bugs or Bears, your videos are always so interesting, so informative, and so well narrated. I always watch them with delight. Thank you and Merry Christmas! I really enjoyed your Christmas bear gift.
Bugs or Bears could be a neat band name 🤪
I love that you throw in extant animals in your video, it is great to have the variety.
You are my favourite channel on TH-cam by a landslide. I’m pretty sure I’ve watched every one of your videos multiple times over the years lol. Awesome work. Thankyou:)
The best thing about polar bears is that they are super friendly and are open to cuddles.
I've seen videos where they roll over like puppies when you rub them under the chin.
Only condition is, you need to be a polar bear yourself
😂😂😂
They are, the Vikings had them as pets, as they did with regular brown bears.
Polar bears were for important people, while brown bears for the commoners. It was so common special laws had to be invented, as people seemed to tell their bears to kill their annoying neighbors quite often, and then got acquitted from murder since the bear did it 😂
@@NotASeriousMoose I live above the arctic circle in Finland and ive never heard of polar bears here but i think its mostly because they dont live in these regions. There is some in northern parts of Russia, but in scandinavia? Not on any mainland. Sounds a bit unbelievable, even if it would have been plausible.
In German they are called "Eisbären" which means Ice bears.
Seems very fitting.
Same in Dutch: 1 ijsbeer/ 2 ijsberen
The pronunciation is pretty much the same I guess.
In Russian they are called "белый медведь" which means white bear.
@Brinta3 it's crazy how easy it is to speak German ad a native English speaker as long as you ignore the written language and just focus on pronunciation
Fantastic video as always. This one was really interesting. Also, big shout out to the comment section of your videos which is always a treat to read through. I feel at home here.
Very packed with high-quality observations! Thank you.
Your videos always fell too short! I could watch this or any of your video’s topics for hours! I do mean this as a compliment. I love your channel! But would you consider doing a series of longer, more in depth videos?
Thanks for your work and always putting out unique and interesting content.
What an absolutely fascinating video! Thank you so much for making it! Merry Christmas! 🙏🐻❄️🎄🎁💫
I've binge watched every video and got excited when this popped up on my feed.
I came back due to YT and was surprised how good it was to hear (and, to some extend see) the intro click-boom again. Great content, too.
What a fantastic video. Thank you.
I greatly appreciate your videos ❤❤❤
What a brilliant piece of documentation at least 20 things I did not know in this ...thank you.
The best thing I learned about polar bears from this video is: "The more I think about them, the stranger they get."
What an astonishing evolutionary trait. How do they DO that?!
What's scarier than a polar bear? A bipolar bear.😊
Great video. Thanks!
More light media dropping another banger as usual
Your videos are always great
There's something about this guys voice that i love.
Another great clip.👍🏽
Another amazing video
Great video!
Only channel where I click the notification immediately!
Absolutely fascinating creatures.
In case if anybody didn't know, the San Diego Zoo has a polar bear; it is a magnificent thing to see.
So don't Hudson Bay but they don't go out at night with out a gun . Just saying.
you should start a paetron i’d definitely pay for longer videos. love your content!
Fantastic ! Thanks.
What a great channel.
💖love the vid came out in time for my birthday today 💖
always love this channel, polar bears rule
I had no idea they were called sea bears.
Happy Holidays, Mothlight
we neeeeeed longer videossssss
As long as we're dumping huge amounts of plastic into the ocean, we may as well create artificial plastic bergs for seals to rest on and polar bears to hunt from. Furthermore, we should replace the Great Auk with transplanted penguin colonies. It only makes sense and it would help the bears eat, and increase the amount of phosphorous on the rapidly-melting permafrost.
This video was great
I once watched footage of one of these monsters dismantling a small Caterpillar vehicle to get at a chocolate bar that had been left inside it. They are truly one of the most fearsome and dangerous Apex Predators on the planet.
Thanks again
I would love to see the polar bears continue and evolve for thousands of years, theyre so cool 🥶
Another great clip for sure about a Polar Bear
Much appreciated. 🙂👍
It would be interesting to see how polar bear evolution would continue into the future. I predict they would (will?) continue evolving marine features, maybe along similar lines to pinnipeds, and possibly eventually becoming fully aquatic marine apex predators similar to certain whales.
Almost guaranteed they will be extinct very soon
Although they're very at home in the open ocean, they don't seem to do much of their hunting at sea.You may be right but, If the sea ice continues to reduce in size, I think they'll follow the prey. So they'll probably become more common on the nearest land, such as Norway, Canada or maybe even Siberia. That's assuming that the sea ice does disappear. Our climate change could switch at any time, without warning and give us another ice age.
Q: What is the fur color of a polar-grizzly hybrid?
A: Tan.
Q: What are they called?
A: nanulak
Q: Are they friendly?
A: No. Not at all. Are you crazy?
But how did these Svalbard bears learn to speak and smelt meteoric iron? 😁
Super interesting video
Fascinating
Very cool
Sea Bears are no joke. They are the real deal.
I agree. The only known defense is to draw an anti sea bear circle in the sand.
They look so cute and fluffy 🤩
Babe. Wake up. Moth light media dropped.
I love this channel I’ve seen ever video
I share the sentiment of wishing for longer videos, the infomation presented is concise but I'm sure there's more to elaborate on.
Moar please.
moth light media the kinda guy to make a 10 minute video about bears
It's not even eight minutes , still felt like I learnt so much , even being an animal geek and cetaceans and amphibious mammals are some of my favourite ones .
yeah i wasnt insulting him @@Krankenwagen571
Panda: "You think you are weird Bear? You merely adopted it, I was born in it. Molded by it!"
I never knew that Polar Bears had such an interesting lore!
Haven't clicked on a video so quickly in a long time 😂
When a seal escapes a polar bear attack:
"Yeah. I'm glad it was just a sea bear. This circle would never hold back a sea rhinoceros."
Bears are the great generalists of our planet
A high tolerance to heavy metal:
Just another reason to respect polar bears
Nice
Another interesting fact: Polar Bears do not hibernate.
They don’t fully hibernate a mother bear can still go 8 months without food
Watching a bear swim that tast and gracefully sends chill down my spine.
Terrifying.
Cool!!
3:27 Well that dude doing the downward dog is definitely a wierd animal 😂
Never seen a Polar Bear and Orca encounter. Never. Is there on the Internet. That's one giant ass Dolphin.
nice one :)
I wonder how many niches today are pretty much unique through all of life history, and even more so how many of the past niches are completely alien to anything alive today
it would be interesting to see where polar bear evolution goes far into the future (if they don't end up going extinct that is). would they further their aquatic adaptations and become more seal like?
It's highly unlikely they become more seal like because that ecological niche is already filled. If the Arctic becomes much warmer then many temperate animals will move north. Polar bears will hunt them or their young.
They adapted to be even more cute than their brown bear cousins
They gained my respect and a new way of looking at our feable human life. Now favorite animal topping penguins
Bears are huggable creatures
I'd imagine developing webbing between the toes is a pretty easy evolutionary feat. I imagine this because some of my toes are webbed!
The vast majority of my diet is also marine animals
I didn't even know brown bears and grizzly bears were of the same species-it all makes more sense with this information.
Brown bear is the parent species. The grizzly is just one of many subspecies of it around the world. For example there are 2 brown bear subspecies in N. America; grizzly and Kodiak, there are several more in Eurasia.
If they almost exclusively prey on predators then there needs to be a Sharknado vs Polar Bearctopus movie.
Because of the polar bear’s niche, do you think it would be possible that they could someday evolve to become more aquatic? Like a platypus or something
The power of the thumbnail ma guy
OMG This is the 2ns TH-cam video I've seen ever that the narrator says "Niche" correctly!!!
I'm a bit confused, you said that Brown Bears would have reached Greenland when there was NO ice, and become isolated when it got colder and the Ice returned, wouldn't the Ice returning mean it could be walked across and thus NOT be isolated...?
In the Netherlands we call em IJsberen.( ICEbear)
Make longer videos like 30 min so I can zone out and do chores with it playing in the background
Its amazing to imagine in a few hundred million years if the melting ice caps dont completely wipe them out that a lineage of polar bears could adapt to be completely aquatic mammalian predators. Like a killer whale.
Makes me fascinated how we may actually have current fossils of animals that may have actually been adapted to these climates and were the apex predators of this unique ecosystems! Considering like you said how genetically and physically similar they are to most bears, I feel if we had discovered this bear as an extinct species, and the arctic climate no longer existed, would we have known they were ocean specialists, maybe wider and larger feet for spreading on snow is a potential convergent evolutionary trait to look into? More likely than this, How many other skeletons of fascinating marine dependant terrestrial predators on sea ice we’ve missed discovering or haven’t yet!
My face when i get locked out of the house so I'm forced to become a hyper-predator: 🐻
Polar bears still retain the ability to scavenge non-meat foods, though I imagine their body uses it less efficiently. This is a problem for Canada's northern communities. There was even a story from a few years ago when several tons of sour grain was dumped, then a polar bear ate it and got drunk.
In Danish we call them isbjørne, ice bears, quite a fitting name
Polar bears could be the beginning of a mammalian mosasaur.