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Why You'd Never Want To Meet A Polar Bear — Transcript

by Depth Theory · 2,642 words · 374 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

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0:00This is the view from the neck of a
0:01polar bear.
0:03About 10 years ago, American scientists
0:05started fitting adult females out on the
0:07sea ice with collars that carry a video
0:10camera. So, for about 10 days at a time,
0:13you see exactly what the bear sees. A
0:16lot of it is walking. A lot of it is
0:18ice. And then, every so often, it's
0:22this.
0:23The bear has stopped at a small hole in
0:25the ice, and it's staring into it. It
0:27can keep that up for hours, sometimes
0:30for days, because somewhere under there
0:32is an animal that has to come up for air
0:34eventually.
0:36The next day, there's blood on the snow.
0:39Now, this is the animal on the Christmas
0:40cards. It's on the soft drink ads. Kids
0:43go to sleep holding a stuffed one. And
0:46the last animal we covered on this
0:47channel, the humpback whale, is scary
0:49because it barely knows you're there.
0:52This one is the opposite. When
0:54researchers went through more than a
0:55century of polar bear attacks on people,
0:58they found that in most of them, the
0:59bear was acting as a predator. And the
1:02more you learn about what this animal
1:03can do, the less that surprises you.
1:06It's been recorded killing prey at least
1:08five times its own weight. It can dig a
1:11seal out from under a meter of snow
1:13without ever seeing it. It'll cross an
1:15ocean on foot. It eats its own kind. And
1:19through all of that, it's almost always
1:22hungry. So, let's talk about why you'd
1:24never want to meet one.
1:26First, the size. A big male can weigh
1:29more than 600 kilos. That's seven or
1:32eight grown men. Up on its hind legs, it
1:34can stand more than 3 m tall. So, in
1:37most houses, its head would go through
1:39the ceiling. A single paw can be about
1:4223 cm wide, and the claws on it can haul
1:45a 90-kilo seal straight up out of the
1:48water. 90 kilos is a fully grown man.
1:52And its scientific name means sea bear,
1:55because this is really an ocean animal.
1:57It lives on the frozen sea, and
1:59everything on it is built for that. The
2:02soles of its feet are covered in tiny
2:04bumps, and when researchers 3D printed
2:06copies and tested them on snow, those
2:08bumps gave 30 to 50% more grip. And in
2:122025, scientists found that the natural
2:15grease on its fur stops ice from
2:17sticking to it. Wash the grease off and
2:19the ice grabs on. Inuit hunters knew
2:22about this long before the scientists
2:24did. They used unwashed bear fur on
2:26their hunting stools and sandals so they
2:28could move across the ice quietly, which
2:31brings us to how it finds you. You'll
2:33read online that a polar bear can smell
2:36a seal from 32 km away. Some places say
2:3964. Nobody has ever tested that. The
2:43best estimate in the scientific
2:45literature is that it can pick up a
2:46seal's breathing hole from up to about 3
2:49km, which is still ridiculous.
2:52Inside its snout, the surface that
2:54detects smell is about the area of four
2:57sheets of printer paper folded up inside
3:00its head. And it doesn't just wander
3:02around hoping to catch a smell.
3:04In 2017, researchers went through 11
3:07years of movements from 123 collared
3:10bears, and they found a pattern. The
3:13bears walk across the wind, so a
3:15constant stream of new air blows past
3:18the nose. And when something interesting
3:20comes through, the bear turns sharply,
3:22and it follows the smell straight into
3:24the wind to wherever it's coming from.
3:27That's a search pattern. Here's what
3:29that nose can do.
3:31A ringed seal mother hides her pup in a
3:33cave dug into the snow on top of the sea
3:36ice. From the outside, there's nothing
3:38to see, just flat white with up to about
3:41a meter of snow over it. The bear smells
3:44it anyway. Then it rears up and comes
3:46down on the roof with its front paws.
3:49Solid ice doesn't always save them,
3:51either. In the Canadian Arctic,
3:53scientists found 14 places where bears
3:56had clawed their way down through sea
3:57ice to reach seals. The ice averaged 41
4:01cm thick, and some of those holes were
4:03big enough for you to fall through. Out
4:06in the open, it's even worse. When a
4:09seal is lying on the ice, the bear
4:11crawls toward it flat and slow.
4:14Whenever the seal lifts its head to look
4:15around, the bear stops dead.
4:18The seal looks away and it starts
4:20crawling again.
4:21And then, from a few meters away, it
4:24explodes.
4:25A seal spends its whole life watching
4:28for this and it still happens. You don't
4:31watch for anything. So, it must be
4:33incredibly good at this, right? Well,
4:36no. And that's what makes it dangerous.
4:39In one study on Svalbard, researchers
4:42counted 62 attacks on seal lairs and
4:44breathing holes. Six of them ended in a
4:47kill.
4:48They also tracked 10 full charges at
4:51seals out on the ice. One worked. And
4:54the bear pays for every miss. In 2018,
4:58those same camera collars helped show
5:00that bears burn about 60% more energy
5:03than anyone had assumed. Over just 8 to
5:0611 days, five of the nine bears in the
5:09study lost body mass. So, this is an
5:12animal that's always close to running
5:14out, which hunts by smell, and which
5:16doesn't give up. That's why it's after
5:19fat. A bear can eat 45 kilos of seal
5:23blubber in one sitting. And when hunting
5:25is good, it'll often eat just the
5:27blubber and skin and leave the rest. Fat
5:30can make up about half its body weight.
5:33When scientists sequenced its genome,
5:35many of the genes that had changed most
5:37were linked to the heart. Its whole body
5:40has been rebuilt around a diet that
5:42would kill you. And here's a strange
5:44side effect. Its liver holds so much
5:47vitamin A that eating it can poison a
5:49person. So, even if you somehow won, you
5:52still couldn't eat the whole thing.
5:54So, what about the bite?
5:56If you look it up, you'll see 1,200 lb
5:59per square inch. And I couldn't find a
6:01single measurement behind that. Nobody
6:04has convinced a polar bear to bite a
6:05sensor. The only serious number I could
6:08find comes from a computer model, and it
6:10works out to around 200 kilos of force
6:12at the canines and about 500 at the back
6:15teeth. But that same model turned up
6:18something much weirder. The polar bear's
6:20skull is weaker than a brown bear's.
6:23Under a hard bite, the stress in it can
6:26run up to four times higher. It evolved
6:29eating something soft, so its skull
6:31never needed to be better. And when
6:33researchers checked 249 museum skulls,
6:37one in five had a broken tooth. So the
6:40most feared bear on the planet has a
6:42slightly fragile head. It doesn't really
6:44matter. One bite will still kill a seal.
6:48And it doesn't stop at seals. In the
6:50Canadian Arctic, a pod of belugas got
6:53trapped at a small opening in the ice. A
6:56medium-sized female bear, somewhere
6:58around 130 to 180 kilos, killed three of
7:02them. Two were adults, about 4 m long
7:05and calculated at about 935 kilos. She
7:09dragged one of them 7 m out of the
7:12water. That's like you killing a horse
7:14and pulling it across the street. In the
7:17summer of 2020, a station cook on
7:19Svalbard filmed a bear chasing a bull
7:22reindeer.
7:23The reindeer did what you'd probably do.
7:25It ran into the sea.
7:27The bear went in after it, wounded it,
7:30drowned it, and dragged it back to
7:32shore. In 2024, a single bear went
7:35through a seabird colony in Alaska and
7:37destroyed 89% of the nests in less than
7:40a day. And in September 2017, on Wrangel
7:44Island in Russia, more than 180 polar
7:47bears were seen feeding on one dead
7:49bowhead whale.
7:51A carcass like that holds the same
7:53energy as more than 1,300 adult seals.
7:57Then, there's the one animal that fights
7:59back. An adult walrus can weigh a ton
8:01and a half, with tusks up to about a
8:04meter long. One bite kills a seal, but
8:07it can take several just to get through
8:09a walrus calf's skull. And a young
8:11walrus can take an adult male bear
8:13hours. And here's something scientists
8:16are still arguing about. For more than
8:18200 years, Inuit hunters have told
8:21stories about polar bears throwing
8:23chunks of ice at walruses or dropping
8:26rocks on them from above. In 2021,
8:29researchers pulled those accounts
8:30together. Nobody has proven that wild
8:33bears really do this. It might be rare.
8:36It might be nothing. But it's the kind
8:39of story you don't want to be true. So,
8:42how do you get away? You could get in
8:44the water, but this is a sea bear. It
8:47swims at around 10 km an hour pulling
8:50with those giant front paws with its
8:52nostrils closed when it goes under. In
8:552014, off Svalbard, researchers watched
8:58one go after a group of bearded seals
9:00from underwater. The old record for a
9:02polar bear dive was 72 seconds. This one
9:06stayed under for 3 minutes and 10
9:08seconds, and it closed 35 to 40 m. It
9:12got one of the seals by the flipper. And
9:14then it lost it, which, again, is how it
9:18usually goes. They can also just keep
9:20going. In 2008, scientists followed a
9:23collared female in the Beaufort Sea who
9:26swam for 9 days straight through water
9:29at about 2 to 6°. And covered 687
9:33km. That's further than London to
9:36Edinburgh.
9:37By the end of that journey, she'd lost
9:39more than a fifth of her body weight and
9:41the cub she started out with. Now,
9:44nothing much hunts a polar bear. There
9:46are people and there are other polar
9:48bears. A pregnant female can go up to 8
9:51months without eating. And in that time,
9:54she's making milk that's up to 35% fat
9:57feeding a cub that starts at about 600
10:00g. And an adult male is about twice her
10:03size. On Svalbard, between 2008 and
10:062010, researchers documented three bears
10:09apparently killed by males, bitten on
10:12the head with the fat eaten first. One
10:15of the killers was very large and very
10:17fat, so it wasn't even desperate. One
10:20male carried a dead yearling across the
10:22ice flows in its mouth, swimming across
10:25the gaps. And in 2004 in the Beaufort
10:28Sea, a pregnant female was killed at her
10:31own den by a bear that seems to have
10:33found her by smell. After decades of
10:36research in that region, nobody had
10:38recorded that before. And don't think
10:40you can stay out of its territory
10:42because it doesn't really have one.
10:44Tigers and wolves hold a patch of
10:46ground. A polar bear just walks. In one
10:50Beaufort Sea study, a female's activity
10:52area for a single year reached almost
10:54600,000 square kilometers. That's bigger
10:58than France. One bear collared in Alaska
11:01traveled more than 5,000 kilometers in a
11:03year, all the way to Greenland, passing
11:05close to the North Pole on the way. And
11:08in September 2024, a young bear turned
11:11up at a cabin in Iceland, a country
11:13without any polar bears, probably after
11:16drifting over from Greenland on the ice.
11:18And these days, a lot of them are ending
11:20up on land. Polar bears need sea ice to
11:23reach seals. And in much of the Arctic,
11:26the ice has been leaving earlier and
11:28coming back later. You might think a
11:30bear could just live like a grizzly
11:31until it comes back. It can still breed
11:33with them, after all. But in 2024,
11:36researchers put collars on 20 bears
11:39stuck ashore. And 19 of them lost
11:41weight, about a kilo a day, whether they
11:44were out foraging or just lying still.
11:46In the words of one of the authors,
11:48"Polar bears are not grizzly bears
11:50wearing white coats. So, they go where
11:53the food is." In 2019 in Belushya Guba,
11:57a Russian military town in the Arctic,
11:5952 bears have been coming and going
12:01since December. They went into
12:03buildings, and scaring them off with
12:05cars and dogs didn't work. So, the
12:08region declared a state of emergency
12:10because of bears. In 2016, about 10 of
12:14them surrounded a weather station on
12:16Troynoy Island. The five staff couldn't
12:19safely go outside, and they couldn't
12:21legally shoot, so they fired flares
12:23until the flares ran out. After about 2
12:26weeks, a passing research ship sent a
12:28helicopter, and it delivered more
12:30flares, and I promise this is real,
12:32three puppies. So, how often does a
12:35polar bear actually get to a person? The
12:38best count we've got goes from 1870 to
12:402014, and it found 73 attacks with 20
12:44people killed. The authors say it's
12:46incomplete, but that's still rare. What
12:49stands out is who did it, mostly
12:52underfed adult males, and where, mostly
12:55in camps and in towns. In Churchill,
12:58Manitoba, on the morning after Halloween
13:00in 2013, a bear grabbed a woman walking
13:03home. A 69-year-old neighbor named Bill
13:06Ayotte heard the screaming, and he ran
13:08out at it with a shovel. The bear turned
13:11on him. People fired shots and threw
13:13things, and it stayed until a young man
13:16pushed it off him with his vehicle. They
13:18both survived. So, let's say it's you.
13:21You're out on the ice, and one of these
13:23is coming toward you. What would you
13:25actually do? You could run, but it can
13:28hit something like 40 km an hour in a
13:30short burst, and running is what starts
13:33the chase. Every safety guide says the
13:35same thing, don't run. You could climb a
13:38tree, except that there aren't any. You
13:41could get in the water, which we've
13:42covered. You could play dead, like
13:44people say to do with some other bears,
13:46but the US Fish and Wildlife Service is
13:48very clear about that, don't. If it
13:51actually reaches you, the official
13:53advice is to fight back and aim for the
13:55nose and the face. And to be fair, we
13:58did learn that its skull is weaker than
14:00a brown bear's. I'm sure that'll be a
14:02comfort. So, the real answer is the
14:04boring one. You don't let it get that
14:07close. You stay together. You keep your
14:09food away from where you sleep, and you
14:11use your deterrents while it's still a
14:13long way off. In Churchill, there's a
14:1624-hour phone line just for reporting
14:19bears, and the number spells out 675
14:22bear.
14:23There's also a polar bear jail with five
14:26air-conditioned cells.
14:28To be fair to the bear, it's not a
14:30villain. There are about 26,000 of them
14:33left, and a lot of the ones that come
14:35near us are starving in a place that's
14:37melting underneath them. Every year,
14:40tourists fly up to Churchill, sit in a
14:42giant buggy with a hot coffee, and go
14:45home with a nice photo and every limb
14:47they arrived with.
14:48But, for the bear, nothing about this
14:50has changed. It's still walking
14:52crosswind across a frozen ocean, reading
14:55the air, looking for something fat that
14:58hasn't noticed it yet. Most of the time,
15:01it'll miss. It's going to try again,
15:03anyway. As for Bill Ayotte, I keep
15:06coming back to him. 69 years old, he
15:09heard someone screaming, and he went out
15:11the door with a shovel to fight a
15:13600-kilo predator. I'd love to tell you
15:16I'd do the same.
15:18I would be watching from the attic.
15:20Anyway, thanks for watching this one. If
15:23there's another animal you think we
15:24should cover, let me know in the
15:25comments. I do actually read them. And
15:28if you want to see another video like
15:29this one, check it out here.

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