Yearly Archives: 2014

Polar bear gives birth in Munich zoo, with photos and video

Posted on January 8, 2014 | Comments Off on Polar bear gives birth in Munich zoo, with photos and video

Fabulous photos of 3 week old twin polar bear cubs (born December 9, 2013), have been released by the Hellabrunn Zoo in Munich, Germany. There’s video of the births as well. The newborn cubs are so tiny  — it’s hard to imagine them being born in the dead of winter in a snow den!

PB newborn with mother Munich Zoo Dec 2013

All but one of the photos shown here, including the one above, are of the newborns at 3 weeks of age. The one below is a screen cap taken from the video of the birth, and is the only one that shows the cubs just hours old. They seem to have grown a bit in 3 weeks.

PB newborns birth_11PolarBearTwins2_Zoo screen cap

From this January 1, 2014 account (“Hellabrunn Zoo Welcomes Polar Bear Twins”):

“On December 9, a Polar Bear named Giovanna gave birth to two cubs at Munich’s Hellabrunn Zoo. Both births were seen on cameras installed in the birthing den and the connecting corridor to the main den. This is remarkable on two counts: for both births, Giovanna positioned herself so that she was directly in the cameras’ field of view. Secondly, this is the first time that a Polar Bear birth has been filmed in color worldwide!

The cubs were born at 08:39 and 09:43 respectively, to parents Giovanna (7) and Yogi (14). The zoo’s director, Dr. Andreas Knieriem, enthused, “It is as if we were there live watching the labour and birth of a Polar Bear and, as if that weren’t enough, Giovanna showed us not one, but two very different births!”

Continue reading

Comments Off on Polar bear gives birth in Munich zoo, with photos and video

Posted in Advocacy, Life History

Tagged , , , , ,

Polar bears in winter: starving bears and attacks on humans

Posted on January 6, 2014 | Comments Off on Polar bears in winter: starving bears and attacks on humans

Winter in the Arctic can be a tough time for polar bears. Between the cold, darkness and ever-thickening sea ice with fewer open leads, polar bears often find that seals are hard to come by.

So it should not be surprising to find out that polar bears are at their lowest body weight at the end of winter (Ramsay and Stirling 1988:613; Stirling 2002:68).

In other words, polar bears lose weight over the winter – not just during the ice-free summer period. That’s why the spring and early summer feeding period is so critical: gorging on young seals rebuilds the polar bears’ fat reserves lost over the winter and packs on even more fat to tide them over the late summer/early fall ice-free period.

Last fall, a potentially serious attack by a polar bear on a Churchill, Manitoba resident on Hallowe’en night (early hours of November 1) got a lot of attention worldwide. Some media outlets suggested that the bear involved in this attack was either starving or so hungry that he was driven to attack. However, this assertion was not supported by any evidence — we simply don’t know whether he was in poor condition or not. While the bear was undoubtedly leaner at the end of October than he was in July, that doesn’t mean he was actually ‘starving.’

So, here’s the question: given that polar bears have a tough time finding seals to eat during the dark and cold Arctic winter and are presumably at their hungriest then, do serious polar bear attacks on humans also happen in winter?
Continue reading

Comments Off on Polar bears in winter: starving bears and attacks on humans

Posted in Life History, Polar bear attacks

Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Tracking polar bears in the Beaufort Sea: December map

Posted on January 5, 2014 | Comments Off on Tracking polar bears in the Beaufort Sea: December map

Here is the December 2013 follow-up to my post on the July track map for female polar bears being followed by satellite in the Beaufort Sea by the US Geological Survey (USGS) – Ten out of ten polar bears being tracked this summer in the Beaufort Sea are on the ice.

See that post for methods and other background on this topic, and some track maps from 2012 (also available at the USGS website here).

The track map for December 2013 is copied below (Figure 1).

There has been little change from November: six of the bears that were being tracked in October were still present (down from ten in July) and one bear that went Arctic walkabout in October has returned and is still in the area. The same seven bears present in November were still being tracked in December but did not move very much. Continue reading

Comments Off on Tracking polar bears in the Beaufort Sea: December map

Posted in Life History

Tagged , , , , , , ,

New polar bear population status documents completed but have been withheld

Posted on January 1, 2014 | Comments Off on New polar bear population status documents completed but have been withheld

I suggested in my last post of 2013 that the biologists of the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG) might have learned some lessons over the last year about the folly of withholding evidence, fudging data, and trying to hide good news. However, it appears that was wishful thinking.

In the course of writing the essay on my top posts of 2013, I went to the PBSG website to check something, and blow me over with a feather, found an announcement that had been added a few weeks ago (December 16, 2013) without a whisper to the media.

The old PBSG page, “Population status” – which used to say “The total number of polar bears worldwide is estimated to be 20,000 – 25,000” – has been replace by a notice entitled “Population status reviews.”

The former estimate population estimate (“20,000 – 25,000”) can no longer be found on the website and no other figure is offered.

The sidebar menu option “Status table” says “will be published soon.”

I’ve copied the short PBSG notice in its entirety below (pdf here):
Continue reading

Comments Off on New polar bear population status documents completed but have been withheld

Posted in Conservation Status, Population

Tagged , , , , , , , , ,