Posts tagged "polar bears"

Remember those ads for Coca Cola with the computer-animated polar bears wearing scarves and going sledding? Yeah, that was weird, but so, so cute.

Good news is, we've got our paws on a video featuring a baby polar bear living it up in the fluffy white stuff, and we're not talking about his precious coat!

So forget about those soda bears and get rid of those winter blues by watching this little guy get all roly poly! Now if there were only a way to get him into our backyard...



More Polar Bears

Twin polar bear cubs Aleut and Gregor made their first foray into the public eye at the Nuremberg Zoo on Thursday, dazzling zoo-goers with a three-hour playtime packed with cute antics.

According to the Daily Mail, the 45-pound cubs spent the afternoon pawing their way around the Arctic Circle enclosure and taking swimming lessons in their chilled pool, all while under the protective eye of their mother, Vera. Aleut and Gregor are expected to tip the scales at 1,500 pounds when fully grown.

Only days after the sudden death of 4-year-old superstar Knut (also born at the Nuremberg Zoo), Aleut and Gregor's coming out party couldn't have happened at a better time for Germany's mourning polar bear lovers. Born on Dec. 2, 2010, Aleut and Gregor made their debut exactly four years after Knut's first public appearance.

Everyone knows that polar bears are good swimmers, but the amazing journey of this bear beats all. In an incredible feat of strength and endurance, one female polar bear swam through the icy waters north of Alaska nonstop for almost 10 days, covering 420 miles as she searched for drift-ice hunting grounds.

Researchers say it's the longest swim by a polar bear ever recorded. Scientists in the arctic were able to track the epic swim through the Beaufort Sea because the female was wearing a GPS radio collar.

"We are in awe that an animal that spends most of its time on the surface of sea ice could swim constantly for so long in water so cold," the leader researcher told the BBC. "It is truly an amazing feat."

The researchers had been tracking the bear for two months as she looked for food for herself and a cub. During that time, the bear lost more than one-fifth of her body fat. Long swims such as this may become more common for polar bears as increased sea ice melts push the bears to swim farther in search of sustenance, caution researchers.

We are inspired by this polar bear's power and perseverance. To help protect polar bears and their natural habitats, check out the programs of the World Wildlife Fund.

Polar bears aren't just smarter than the average bear; they like their privacy too. As BBC cinematographers learned in the video above, just because you've cleverly disguised spy cameras as icebergs, snowballs, etc., that doesn't mean you're going to get footage of a polar bear's most tender and candid moments.

"Of all the subjects ever filmed by spy cams, the polar bear has shown the greatest curiosity and intelligence," explains a narrator from the BBC's upcoming documentary "Polar Bear: Spy on the Ice." As the BBC crew struggled to capture the polar bears in their natural state, the crew's hidden cameras faced a life-and-death struggle of their own.

Designing the spy-cams to withstand the punishing, arctic conditions of the Svalbard Islands, engineers may have underestimated the abuse that a nosy polar bear can deal out. In one clip, the BBC's "snow-cam" was destroyed by a curious young male. In another, a different young male, mystified by the mobile camera setup, chases down the crew's ski-mounted "blizzard-cam."

As clever as these spy camera designs are, the bears seemed to recognize that something weird was up. Next time, researchers might want to try a different approach, as these super-curious bears aren't easily tricked. On the upside, the BBC narrator notes, the polar bear's intense curiosity is perhaps the species' "best hope for the future."

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This cute cub will have no problem when it comes time to hit the dance floor at the polar bear prom; his mom is teaching him all the right dance moves at an early age.

This mama polar bear and her little one indulged in a little playtime on the ice in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, reports the Daily Mail. The cub climbed in and out of the holes in the newly-forming ice and learned how to slide across the slippery surface, mastering skills that are no doubt important for his education. But hey, who says learning can't be fun?

Another week, another bear-cub zoo debut. "We'll see your 5-month-old panda and raise you a 3-month-old polar bear," Japan taunted San Diego this week. "Not fair," San Diego's Yun Zi protested after watching the video below. "That polar bear gets her own stuffed toy polar bear to play with. That's adorable. How am I supposed to compete with that?" The dejected panda cub then waddled off into a patch of bamboo to eat his feelings.

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After nearly a dozen visits to the Philadelphia Zoo, photographer Michael S. Confer had almost given up on getting a photo of swimming polar bears, but then he pulled off a stunner: an amazing shot of a polar bear named Coldilocks giving him a wave, reports the Telegraph.

A longtime member of the Philadelphia Zoo, Confer, 39, decided last year that he would try to take a photo of the polar bears swimming in their exhibit. With the magnificent bears' recent addition to the endangered species list, Confer thought the photograph would be timely. "The zoo is about 10 minutes from our house and every month, my wife and I would take our daughter for a visit," Confer explains to Paw Nation.

Once at the zoo, he'd always make a beeline for the polar bear exhibit, but Confer never saw the polar bears swim. "They're supposed to spend the majority of their life in the pool, and I can't even see 'em take a quick dip," Confer remembers. "They were always laying around sleeping."

Last November, on his 10th visit to the zoo in quest of his polar bear photograph, Confer got lucky. "I was walking away from the polar bear exhibit when I heard my wife yell my name," Confer tells Paw Nation. The photographer ran back to the polar bear exhibit, where -- finally!-- one of the polar bears had jumped into the pool.

"She [Coldilocks the polar bear] was swimming in big counter-clockwise circles around the pool," Confer says. Quickly, he placed the lens of his camera right up against the glass and began firing off shots on his camera -- about 3 to 4 frames per second. "I couldn't tilt my camera up or down, or else there would be glare from the glass," Confer explains.

The bear glided around the pool, batting at a ball and swimming in languid circles. "She'd go out of my sight and come back," says Confer. "She seemed curious and would swim back towards me."

Then Coldilocks shocked Confer with a delightful and unusual maneuver. "She swam right up, floating about four feet above in the tank, then she just let herself go and slowly dropped to the bottom of the aquarium," Confer says. "As she dropped, her left paw just slowly came up." The bear's right paw, says Confer, remained down.

Was Coldilocks really waving at the photographer? "I'm not sure if she was waving at me," says Confer. "But it sure felt like it."