Ah, that never-ending treadmill of meal preparation and cleanup. You might be surprised to find out that polar bears do it too.
![Figure 1. How do polar bears look so clean most of the time when they get this bloody on a regular basis? They wash up! [This picture is not from Stirling’s paper].](https://i0.wp.com/polarbearscience.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/pbear_withcubs_feeding.jpg?resize=500%2C334)
Figure 1. How do polar bears look so clean most of the time when they get this bloody on a regular basis? They wash up!
I found an interesting description of polar bears washing during and after feeding, by a young Ian Stirling in one of his earliest published polar bear papers (Stirling 1974). At the time, he was observing polar bears on southwest Devon Island (74°43′ N; 91°10′ W, see Fig. 2 below) between 24 July and 8 August
1973. Even today, there’s ice for hunting seals in mid-to-late-summer in that part of Canada (Fig. 3).
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![Figure 1. How do polar bears look so clean most of the time when they get this bloody on a regular basis? They wash up! [This picture is not from Stirling’s paper].](https://i0.wp.com/polarbearscience.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/pbear_withcubs_feeding.jpg)
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