Talk:Polar bear

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Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
January 6, 2011	Good article nominee	Listed
April 10, 2016	Peer review	Reviewed
August 9, 2023	Peer review	Reviewed
September 21, 2023	Featured article candidate	Promoted
Current status: Featured article

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Territoriality in brown bears

The article states that "unlike brown bears, polar bears are not territorial". I don't think this is a valid comparison, since as far as I know brown bears aren't territorial in the classic sense of the term either, and only engage in conflicts when certain resources are directly threatened by others of their kind. This is also supported by the Wikipedia article about the species. TheBlackCaiman (talk) 12:52, 7 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Polar bear range map

My impression is that Polar bear range map is partly wrong regarding its message that there are polar bears on Greenland's inland ice, see c:File talk:Polar bear range map.png. Unfortunately, both editors involved seem to be inactive since 2018 and 2020 respectively. Is anybody able to modify the map? --Kuhni74 (talk) 09:23, 27 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

may I resume my question? --Kuhni74 (talk) 22:19, 20 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Conservation status: outdated source

Polar bears are listed as “vulnerable” on this page, but the source for that came out in 2015 (8-9 years ago). Obviously this information can’t be updated without any new data, but we should look for more recent sources on the polar bear’s conservation status. LordOfWalruses (talk) 17:39, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't believe there are any newer sources and this pdf explains why. CambridgeBayWeather (solidly non-human), Uqaqtuq (talk), Huliva 16:56, 22 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Dichromat

It states in Characteristics that polar bears are dichromats and lack the cones for green. This was changed sometime since last August, but I haven’t figured out the revision history interface to figure out when.

Mammalian dichromats have cones sensitive to more-or-less blue and more-or-less green, but lack cones sensitive to more-or-less red. If polar bears lacked green-sensitive cones, they would be monochromats, so this is likely vandalism.

The previous text mentioned blue-violet and yellow-green, but lacking a reference, I think it is best simply to specify that they are dichromats, which is linked. Applying human color terms to peak sensitivities in nanometers is somewhat subjective, and unless the specific peaks for polar bears, or at least for Ursidae, have been measured, it’s less than useful.

I’d fix it, but I haven’t done much editing in many years, and I don’t want to just jump into a semi-protected article, especially when the bulk of recent edits have been by a small group of editors. Curtis Clark (talk) 21:06, 19 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Polar bear range map

My impression is that Polar bear range map is partly wrong regarding its message that there are polar bears on Greenland's inland ice, see c:File talk:Polar bear range map.png. Unfortunately, both editors involved seem to be inactive since 2018 and 2020 respectively. Is anybody able to modify the map? --Kuhni74 (talk) 22:43, 20 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]