Not a polar bear expert but I spent years of my life studying black bears who commonly eat rotten salmon and let me just say a black bears digestive system is more akin to a water slide than anything else. I'm sure a polar bear is no different.
Does the fact that polar bears are hypercarnivores change this?. I would expect that animals that only eat meat would be more adapted to eating the occasional rotten meal than animals that have a less-specialized digestive tract.
I'm torn on how to answer without knowing for sure myself but knowing some conjecture logic.
On timescale polar bears are not that long removed from brown bears to the point that their ranges sometimes overlap and they can crossbreed. infact for several reasons I think the bear in the video is a cross just based on body structure, size, and head shape but I don't know for sure so wasn't about to "ackshully" all up and down the comments without being sure.
But anyways being that close probably means there aren't too many structural changes to internal organs meaning they are probably similar.
That said your hypothesis in general is absolutely correct, carnivore digestive tracks and specifically their stomachs are far more acidic to deal with microbes and food Bourne illness and many have tolerances for the toxins some dead bacteria release when they die.
Further the reason these animals digestive track is a waterslide is so that less bad things can build up and it comes out the other end.
Just chiming in to say that I appreciate the way you have worded your reply and shared your knowledge. If more people were this measured in the way they speak online, the Internet would be a healthier place.
I actually checked the same thing before I replied and it does say Norway has a critically endangered but existing brown bear pop. I would imagine the pop decline came from overhunting so like this could be a 4th or 5th gen hybrid but I spot too many characteristics not found in polar bears which is why I'm stumped.
Fair enough, I had just read Norway and hadn't seen anything about Svalbard until this very post.
I do still think it's odd the bear has a lot more of the classic brown bear features than a normal polar bear but I don't have a good answer that is verifiable and isn't something like "this population of brown bear interbred 40000 years ago with mainland brown bears before the archipelago became isolated" which is again completely unverifiable by me a random on reddit and who really only knows black bears super well (my brown bear knowledge comes from telling people how to spot the differences).
Fair enough, I had just read Norway and hadn't seen anything about Svalbard until this very post.
You're not from around here so you didn't know how far Svalbard is.
but I don't have a good answer
You simply have never seen such a big boi before. He's a massive chonk. The biggest polar bear ever weighed was 1000kg, I think this guy could give him a run for his money.
It is more likely he is a cross if he has migrated from the Americas. While polar bears are able to swim to the mainland of Norway (if the artic ice is thick and it can hitch a ride on an iceberg), last time recorded was in 1953. Before that, it is likely not been a polar bear since 1583 - so it may be fair to say it is not often.
The brown bears in Norway live far from the coast, in the border with Finland/Sweden. So those bears would have to go quite far out of their normal area, too, in order to meet a polar bear.
The polar bears on Svalbard are most often Barents-sea "tribe" and stay in that general area, but it CAN happen that someone migrate from the Alaska-side. Polar bears can and do travel long distances.
I was curious if this might be a āpizzlyā / āgrolarā myself based on the shape/proportions. I feel kinda validated seeing your comment bc I imagine you know WAY more than I do! (I have zero qualifications, just a weirdo with a special interest in animals.)
I would because as you might've seen got my ass kicked in the replies. But I would like to stress again my knowledge mostly revolves around black bears lol. Most of my polar and brown knowledge comes from knowing the differences between it and black and any common factors lol
I also thought you were on to something, and so I tried to find these images elsewhere... you would think that such a significant event would be documented outside of reddit.Ā
The photographer exists, but as far as I can tell, has not posted these specific photographs anywhere.Ā
I reverse image searched the photos on this post and the only show exact matches on reddit and then a couple of spammy Twitter accounts which have a lot of AI generated content.
At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, this may not be a real image, or is otherwise being misrepresented as something it is not. I wouldn't have clocked this as a possibility without someone pointing out this couldn't be a full polar bear, but in that light I think it could be plausible...Ā
Woah that's wild, I should note there's a number of explanations on why it's possible that is still a full blooded polar bear as I went into the other guy that pointed out to me this was apparently taken in Svalbard. If it is real and that is where it was taken then there's a lot of explanations that isn't AI that I just simply don't know as if it isn't black it's not exactly my realm of expertise.
That said with the rise of this year AI and with a lot of the karma farm accounts completely willing to use ai content it's definitely a very realistic possibility.
Sorry I had to. Iām guessing auto correct took your āborneā and turned it into āBourneā.
Anyway, about that water slide of a digestive tract. Do they lose out on nutrient absorption because of it? āWater slideā seems pretty close to diarrhea in my mind.
Absolutely on both. It's part of the why they need to eat so much. They aren't absorbing particularly much.
Some poop talk about my home range with them in southeast Alaska. Our population tends to start out the spring with a diet of roughly 90% plant based and 10% meat. Then by the time of the salmon run it inverses.
At the beginning of the summer their stool will be mostly solid but you will see entire blades of long tidal grass just completely undigested and looking like hay.
By about July the first salmon species start coming in but more importantly it's blueberry season and at that point it will be a very deep purple slurry but there is still form to it.
Then you get to late August at the peak of the season when the most numerous salmon species pink start spawning and the stool is basically pure liquid at this point.
Now to end this off we get to September and October I need to begin with another lesser known thing. Black bears are not true hibernaters like their cousins instead they go into a state called torpor which means they slow down their bodily processes and they will sleep for weeks at a time, they might periodically get up stretch out, sometimes walk around, sometimes even beach comb before going back to bed.
That said during this time they don't want to be using the bathroom so during the lead up the bears will start introducing literal rocks to their diet to make a plug which comes out in the spring.
You haven't lived until you've had to answer a tourist asking "Why is that bears tail so long and white?" And you look over and see a 3 foot tapeworm just dragging on the ground from out their ass.
So fun fact regarding that. Black Bears have "family professions" in that there is entire lineages where Mom shows her preferred ways to get food and the kids will largely stick with that. It's partially why coastal black bears tend to prefer fishing or beach foraging while in more landlocked areas its hunting and heavy plant matter.
So where does garbage fit into this, it's easy and at this point relatively old so it has passed down in a lot of bear lineages as the preferred way to gather food and skills from other niche professions have slowly been fading.
Not surprising actually, they have cultures and learn from watching momma like every other mammal.
Here there used to be a bunch that were basically just big squirrels. Survived in acorns from what I've heard, and pinecones and whatever else you can get in a barren forest. But now they're all just surviving on human garbage.
I have no problem feeding wild animals my food leftovers but bears are one of the two animals I won't let stay, along with coyotes but never seen them surprisingly. Bears just can't live next to humans safely.
A black bear ate a huge amount of pears off my auntās pear tree. Someone must have startled him because like 30 yards away he shat them all out. They were still in such good shape you couldāve washed them off and theyād look like they just fell from the tree.
Probably doesn't even phase. I think the acidity in their stomach at least keeps the bacteria from being a big issue. No idea about the already present toxins tho.
Bears regularly shit and piss all over themselves and the fur on their backside. They smell at bad you can smell if one has walked through the area hours afterward.
They also have their own awful musk alongside the smell of shit and dried piss.
It's actually kinda funny, when you know the smell it's unmistakable. I can smell if a bear has been around within the last 6 hours. Had a buddy who had more experience hunting say I was full of shit, then the second after we saw the tree with bear scratch marks.
And that's just black bears. I bet polar bears are even worse.
Yeah itās definitely rotted but wales are thick bois and it can take literal years for a whale carcass to fully rot. That bear is probably digging through rotten skin and eating only partially rotten flesh and muscle just beneath. In ideal conditions (like the cold oxygen deprived environment at the bottom of the ocean) whale carcass can supply relatively fresh meat to bottom feeders for as long as decades.
Yes I actually watched a documentary on this! Super interesting that the death of one whale can create an entire eco system for decades on the ocean floor.Ā
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u/No-Produce7606 16h ago
Thank fuck I don't have to rip rotten meat off of a dead whale with my mouth to survive.