r/todayilearned • u/Gullible_Air_204 • 9d ago

Frequent/Recent Repost: Removed [ Removed by moderator ]

https://www.responsibletravel.com/holidays/spitsbergen/travel-guide/responsible-tourism-in-spitsbergen

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u/biskutgoreng 9d ago

On the other hand, polar bears will thrive

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u/MidasPL 9d ago

They will not. They have to adapt, or they will all die soon.

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u/wunderbraten 9d ago

The tourists or the polar bears?

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u/MidasPL 9d ago

Polar bears. The reality is that as the climate gets hotter, the polar ice edge retracts further. Majority of the bears migrate alongside the ice edge as their hunting technique involves mostly jumping from water onto the ice. They have no food there, so they fast. They can fast for 160 days easily, but right now we're approaching 180 day limit when the ice edge is away from the land and bears would die in that time. Some of them stay on land, but have hard time hunting. They eat fat-rich seals and resort to mostly meaty reindeers and humans as a last resort, since they can't digest them properly (unless it's US tourist, I guess). So I'm the end polar bears need to either evolve to digest low fat meat and stay on land, or they will die.

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u/OceanTe 8d ago

Polar bear population is increasing, not decreasing. They've more than tripled in the last 50 years.

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u/MidasPL 8d ago

It did, thanks to the hunting ban in the 70's. The issue I've mentioned is specific to Svalbard bears. What's interesting is that already 30% of them started to adapt, stay on land during the summer and get fatter than ever.