"The 'Bloody Fingerprints' of Global Warming"

Cannibalism. I bet one of the first things that came to mind when reading that word was an image of a half-masked Anthony Hopkins, talking about eating someone's liver with fava beans and Chianti. But what about a polar bear? No? I don't blame you. But according to a study conducted from January to April of '04, cannibalism is a new behavior scientists have discovered some of these bears displaying. Although it's not rare for polar bears to kill each other to display dominance or to mate (for instance, killing the cub of a female to mate with her), it was the first time in nearly sixty years of combined research (in Alaska and Canada) that scientists say they have seen "incidents of polar bears stalking, killing, and eating other polar bears."

The bears in particular are those in the Southern Beaufort Sea. The major reason? It appears to be none other than global warming. As the ice that connects the bears to their natural feeding grounds (where they hunt seals and mate) moves further and further from shore, they are growing more desperate to find food. Researchers discovered the first incident in January of '04, when the partially eaten carcass of a female was found a short distance from her den. It appeared that a male polar bear had broken through the top of the den, where the female had recently given birth, killed her, then dragged her outside. Her two cubs suffocated when the den collapsed on them.

The second incident also involved another female (also killed by a male) and her cub, which were traveling together. This can be ruled out as the male trying to mate with the female, as it did not attempt to follow and kill her cub (which would've been necessary in order to mate with her). The last incident recorded during this time period was the discovery of the carcass of a young bear, which had been stalked and killed by another.

With the polar ice caps continuing to shrink, one can only assume that this behavior will become a rising trend. As more and more bears are isolated from their feeding grounds, they will have to develop new methods of survival, and it seems cannibalism is one of their new mechanisms. And the sad part is, this may only hasten their disappearance. According to current estimates, global warming will have caused their extinction before the end of the century. However, many feel that this is not an issue that requires immediate attention. As the polar bear population has actually been increasing and not a lot of research has gone into polar bear cannibalism, many think that it is not a pressing matter. But many scientists beg to differ. They do not feel that waiting for an obvious affect on population size is the smart thing to do because, by then, it may be too late to save them. "This is not a Coco-Cola commercial," Deborah Williams of the Alaska Conservation Group, an organization that works to counter-act the terrible effects of global warming, says, "This represents the brutal downside of global warming."

http://animal.discovery.com/news/ap/20060612/polarbears.html
http://scienceline.org/2007/02/05/health_driscoll_polarbears/

Posted by Elizabeth Adams (1)