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The key danger for polar bears posed by the effects of climate change is malnutrition or starvation due to habitat loss.Polar bears hunt seals from a platform of sea ice. Rising temperatures cause the sea ice to melt earlier in the year, driving the bears to shore before they have built sufficient fat reserves to survive the period of scarce food in the late summer and early fall.
The inhospitable environment helps to deter predators; the few predators that hunt on the mainland, including the south polar skua and the southern giant petrel, mainly prey upon chicks. Most Antarctic predators are found in the polar waters, including the orca and the leopard seal .
The polar bear (Ursus maritimus) is a large bear native to the Arctic and nearby areas. It is closely related to the brown bear, and the two species can interbreed.The polar bear is the largest extant species of bear and land carnivore, with adult males weighing 300–800 kg (660–1,760 lb).
Arctic sea ice is the polar bear's habitat. It has been declining at a rate of 13% per decade because the temperature is rising at twice the rate of the rest of the world. [79] [119] By the year 2050, up to two-thirds of the world's polar bears may vanish if the sea ice continues to melt at its current rate. [120]
Although polar bears spend most of their time on the ice rather than in the water, polar bears show the beginnings of aquatic adaptation to swimming (high levels of body fat and nostrils that are able to close), diving, and thermoregulation. Distinctly polar bear fossils can be dated to about 100,000 years ago.
Polar ecology is the relationship between plants and animals in a polar environment. Polar environments are in the Arctic and Antarctic regions. Arctic regions are in the Northern Hemisphere , and it contains land and the islands that surrounds it.
Projected change in polar bear habitat from 2001–2010 to 2041–2050. Arctic warming negatively affects the foraging and breeding ecology of native Arctic mammals, such as Arctic foxes or Arctic reindeer. [91] In July 2019, 200 Svalbard reindeer were found starved to death apparently due to low precipitation related to climate change. [92]
The polar bear has stocky limbs and very short ears that are in accordance with the predictions of Allen's rule, so does the snow leopard. [5] In 2007, R.L. Nudds and S.A. Oswald studied the exposed lengths of seabirds ' legs and found that the exposed leg lengths were negatively correlated with Tm axdiff (body temperature minus minimum ambient ...