Cannibal Polar Bear Swims 426 Miles To Get Away From Meddling Scientists

11 Responses to Cannibal Polar Bear Swims 426 Miles To Get Away From Meddling Scientists

1. Dave N says:

   January 31, 2011 at 1:47 pm

   I thought Polar Bears drown if they have no ice to walk on? In any event, the bear made the swim somewhere in the autumn of 2008.

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   • stevengoddard says:

     January 31, 2011 at 1:50 pm

     That is when Lewis Pugh kayaked to the North Pole.

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     • Mike Davis says:

       January 31, 2011 at 1:54 pm

       Yeah Right! I read about that “Trip”! 🙂

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2. Mike Davis says:

   January 31, 2011 at 1:50 pm

   It was the radio transmitter that caused it. She was hearing voices in her head and was trying to get away from them. It is normal activity for any species to kill and eat a member of its own species. It is part of “Survival of the Fittest”. Maybe it is time the polar bear researchers find productive employment rather than play What if Games about what they do not understand!

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3. M Carpenter says:

   January 31, 2011 at 1:58 pm

   How did they manage to weigh the bear, before and after the swim? (“the bear lost more than 100 pounds during the swim”) Weight Watchers for Polar Bears?!!!

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   • Mike Davis says:

     January 31, 2011 at 2:15 pm

     Remember they tagged the bear because they knew she was going to attempt the swim so they would also have known to ask her to step on a scale before attempting the feat and they had a scale waiting at her destination. Just like the swimmers of the Channel! It was part of the polar bear Summer Olympics marathon swimming event and she was the winner. They have probably extrapolated the weight loss to four decimal points but realized making a claim of 108.7539 pounds of weight loss was a bit of a stretch and it did not pass peer review!

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4. John Silver says:

   January 31, 2011 at 4:12 pm

   Bear Island is all iced in. They’ll be fine there.

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5. Erik says:

   January 31, 2011 at 4:44 pm

   This is soooo funny:

   “Will polar bears make it back to shore?”

   “The future looks bleak for this polar bear and her cub huddled on a rapidly shrinking iceberg 12 miles out to sea.”

   “The pair became stranded after climbing onto the chunk of ice …”

   “…But although the bears look frightened, huddled together in the center of the iceberg…”

   “”If she was able to leave her baby, the mother would probably have survived but our guide was quite pessimistic about the survival of the cub, who probably drowned,” he said.”

   “Some of the members on our trip were in despair. They wanted to take the bears with us and bring them to the nearest land which was obviously impossible.”

   http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/7078673/Will-polar-bears-make-it-back-to-shore.html

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   • stevengoddard says:

     January 31, 2011 at 5:03 pm

     If the humans volunteered their bodies, the bears wouldn’t need to hunt seals.

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6. Peter Ellis says:

   January 31, 2011 at 5:26 pm

   You should do more research before posting irrelevant pictures like the ice chart above. For example, you could have clicked through from the picture blog you linked to the actual story, here.
   http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-polar-bears-20110129,0,6059303.story

   In the case of the marathon bear, whose swim began Aug. 26, 2008, several miles east of Barrow, Alaska

   Precious little ice around Barrow at that time, seeing as it was the second lowest ice levels in history for that date.
   http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=08&fd=26&fy=2008&sm=08&sd=26&sy=2008

   Of course, if you really cared about accuracy, you’d have made one further click and got to the full study (free access), here:
   http://www.springerlink.com/content/032201r34q534455/

   I suppose it’s possible you’re snarking about the amount of time required to get something into print in an academic journal. Maybe you should try it some time?

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7. Erik says:

   January 31, 2011 at 6:13 pm

   volunteer my foot! – ehh wait.. (don’t look)

   http://stevengoddard.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/polar-bear-attack-foot-300×296.jpg

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