The polar bear is the younger brother of the brown bear

Because of the photogenic appearance, the polar bear evokes in people who know it only through telecasts about animals or on the genius cartoon "Umka", tenderness. However, this predator is not at all harmless and the level of ferocity is "nostril to the nostril" with his North American grizzly fellow.

The weight of a polar bear (male) reaches seven hundred and fifty kilograms and even more. According to some reports, there are bears weighing a ton. It is the largest land predator in the world. The female is less than one and a half to two times. The growth of the animal reaches almost three and a half meters. Because of the severity of climate and huge weight, this king of the arctic deserts is forced to constantly eat something. There are cases when a starving bear ate one meal of food up to 10 percent of its own weight, and in a record short time - in only half an hour!

The polar bear prefers to eat seals, it's his favorite food. But in the absence of these, it is quite possible to include rabbits, reindeer, lemmings, crabs and even humans in their diet, if he is so careless that he is within the reach of a distraught animal.

But with a person polar bear prefers not to get involved and attacks only if he is threatened with starvation. Experienced polar explorers say that it is easy to get rid of culinary claims of a bear. To do this, you just have not to behave like food. That is, do not run off headlong when a white giant appears. Known shots of newsreels on which a frail polar explorer, waving a rak off from a packing box, turns into a flight of a snowball, exceeding by its dimensions more than twice.

The polar bear has a phenomenal flair. For example, the seal is capable of "sniffing" as much as thirty-two kilometers. The bear is on top of the food chain. This means that he has practically no natural enemies. And the enemy "unnatural" (that is, a person) is now more concerned with preserving the bear population, only occasionally catching individual individuals for zoos.

Now in the world there are, according to various estimates, from twenty to forty thousand individuals. Most of the white-population live in Northern Canada and Greenland. Under natural conditions, polar bears live up to twenty-two years.

The habitat of most of the bears is around large wormwood where hunting for sea animals and fish is possible. But it is known that they can make long trips on drifting ice. In October, the she-bears prepare lairs, where they will winter and nurse young. It is interesting that polar bears, just like their brown brethren, go into hibernation. True, not always and not all. Without fail Pregnant moths fall asleep, their hibernation lasts up to two and a half months. Before that, they stick up to two hundred kilograms of fat, which they need for the normal development of the cub. Females, free from the bearing of the offspring, and the males go into hibernation for a shorter period and not every winter.

Until 2012, it was believed that the polar bear as a species stood out about one hundred and fifty thousand years ago. For this version, genetic research conducted by a group of scientists a year earlier was spoken. But additional advanced studies have made it possible to specify the age of the species. It turned out that the first white bears separated from their brown ancestors about six hundred thousand years ago. Thus, the polar bear managed to survive several glacial periods quite safely.