At that time, the Secretary of the Interior noted that the dramatic decline in sea ice was the greatest threat the bears faced. Therefore, the population of Polar bears will decrease, while Ben-David said the only thing to stop it is to reverse the loss of sea ice. Rather than going into a hibernation state to conserve energy, polar bears go into starvation, researchers have found. While it has been known that polar bears are endangered due to their melting habitat, scientists have learned that their plight is even worse than previously thought.
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Indiana Polar bears are considered the kings of a given ice outside regardling the the surface of the sphere, however the continuously lack of the Arctic sea ice upon which they seek out closes is generating summer months food meals insurrection which typically terrorizes each of these arresting white-furred unsafe predators. However, the decline is far less pronounced than the changes that occur during the polar bears’ winter hibernation. While they may move to the shore to forage, the food is not almost as plentiful there.
“They have this ability to temporarily allow the outermost portion of the core of the body to cool off substantially and this protects the innermost vital organs – there was not an expectation of that”.
However, they discovered that in the hotter summers, they did not “slow down, they simply starved”. We could not recapture her in October, but we did the following spring. Her data illustrate the hibernation state: a steep drop from 37°C to 35°C in the first week of December, followed by strict regulation at this new “setpoint”. The work suggests polar bears can not use reduced metabolic rates to prolong their reliance on fat stores when food is less abundant.
To this point, the theory was that polar bears would conserve energy in the summer – much like they do in the winter. Comparing body temperature with bear location, activity and the ambient temperature, we realized that these bouts seemed to occur only when a polar bear was swimming. Either the polar bears adapt to land situations or be forced to hunt under ice that can go as deep as 5,000 meters or more.
These data also tell us that polar bears in summer appear to function as typical, food-limited mammals.
Hunting takes a lot of their energy as well and, if it is not successful, it is very likely that exhaustion will contribute to the physical degradation of their bodies.
“We already know the answer to the question, ‘What do we need to do to save polar bears from extinction?”
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The author is an adjunct assistant professor of zoology and physiology at the University of Wyoming.
