![]() ![]() ![]() Increased stress and shorter feeding seasons are particularly hard on pregnant females-they fast eight months because birth occurs on shore when other bears return to feeding. Polar bears must swim longer distances to shore and so are more vulnerable to drowning. By current estimates, sea ice now breaks up three weeks earlier than in the 1970's. Global climate change and ocean warming have resulted in earlier melt dates for sea ice: in the Canadian Arctic melting occurs ve to eight days earlier each decade. Stored fat must last through the inter-ice period, at least four months, because the bears fast once the sea ice melts. They feast on highly digestible seal fat which they store ahead of leaner times. Something in the solitary majesty of the polar bear speaks to us despite the fact the predators often elicit less sense of kinship than do their prey.
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