polar bears are considered the largest of its kind. Their body length can reach 3 meters and a weight of 1 ton
Scientists from the U.S. and Canada have shared the troubling news about a hundred years, from the face of the planet can be solved forever bears. The culprit, as always, is human activity. Readers of our site already know like no other that due to the abundance of greenhouse gases from cars and factories, the air temperature on our planet is rapidly increasing. Particularly strong implications for global warming visible in the cold regions of our planet, which is covered by permafrost. Because of the heat the ice is actively melting, resulting in polar bears and other animals literally lose their habitat. However, clumsy predators are also left without a source of food — usually they are floating on the ice and attack the fleshy seal. With time in the Arctic may not be ice floes and bears will be forced to starve. According to the researchers, their death will not keep itself waiting long.
Disturbing the findings of American and canadian scientists the research was published in science . According to the researchers, polar bears (Ursus maritimus) live only in the Arctic and, depending on their location, their population can be divided into 19 groups. In the summer seasons many of the populated bear regions begin to melt and predators can't hunt seals. So, within a few months they have to survive by extracting energy only from its fat reserves.
polar bears mainly eat seals
Thanks to fats living in less extreme conditions, brown bears hibernate for a few months and not starving. The fact that the fats can be considered "deferred energy" — in the absence of other sources, they start to processed pure energy force. And this only occurs when the depletion of carbohydrates because they are processed much faster fat. The same way works and the body of polar bears, but that's triggered by global warming, prolonged fasting, they may not survive.
To find out how much the melting of ice will affect the life of polar bears from different Arctic regions, researchers have reconstructed changes in natural conditions within a computer model. In it, they took into account two important factors:
According to scientists, with an average body fat, males polar bears can survive without food for about 200 days. Females without cubs, which need to feed, can without harm to their health starve for approximately 255 days. If the females have cubs, life without food is reduced to 117 days. These indicators may greatly influence the activity of animals — usually during fasting, they tend to move less. But, if for some reason the bears will have to run, energy is very quickly dissipate and the duration of their life will be reduced.
Females with cubs have the least chance of survival.
If humanity fails to reduce the amount emitted into the air of greenhouse gases and slow the warming by the year 2100 80% of polar bears may be on the verge of extinction. The greatest damage will be inflicted on the bears living on the Islands of Queen Elizabeth, where the ice is melting much more active than in other regions of the Arctic.
the island of the Queen Elizabeth satellite view
However, even if emissions are reduced, polar bears are still at risk of being on the verge of extinction. The fact that even in the , toed the population of predators will still be reduced. According to their calculations, the better the predictions, it will happen approximately in the year 2120. So, the prospects for polar bears is not very good and this must have something to do.
It is Important to note that on the verge of extinction are now, even those animals that thousands of years were able to adapt to extreme conditions. For example, could you ever think that the face of our planet may disappear such rodents, hamsters? But still as they can, as evidenced by the decision of the International Union for conservation of nature on add hamsters to the list of security status of the CR. That is the meaning of these letters and why hamsters are dying, you can read .
