Template:POTD/2020-04-11
The polar bear (Ursus maritimus) is a hypercarnivorous bear whose native range lies largely within the Arctic Circle. It hunts its preferred food of seals, which make up most of its diet, from the edge of sea ice. This picture shows a malnourished polar bear on an ice floe in the Hinlopen Strait in Svalbard, Norway. The main danger posed to bears by global warming is malnutrition or starvation due to habitat loss. In summer, some polar bears, such as this one, do not make the transition from their winter residence on the islands of Svalbard to the dense drift ice and pack ice of the high Arctic, where they would find a plethora of prey; this is caused by climate change resulting in the ice around the islands melting much earlier than in previous years. This forces the bears to change to a diet of detritus, small animals, bird eggs, and the carcasses of marine animals. Very often, they suffer starvation and are doomed to die. Besides this, insufficient nourishment leads to lower reproductive rates among adult females and the juveniles and cubs have lower survival rates.Photograph credit: Andreas Weith