Why this newly identified polar bear subpopulation is so special
These genetically and geographically isolated bears survive longer without sea ice than scientists thought possible.
By all accounts, there shouldn’t be polar bears in southeastern Greenland—but apparently no one told the polar bears.
Although excellent swimmers, polar bears are fundamentally land animals that subsist almost entirely on marine life. To accomplish that, the massive creatures make a living as ambush predators, lying in wait next to cracks and holes in the sea ice that seals use to breathe.
But in southeastern Greenland, the sea ice season is less than four months—“too short for polar bears to survive,” says Kristin Laidre, a University of Washington scientist who researches Arctic animal ecology in collaboration with the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources. What, then, explains the presence of bears there?
Indigenous subsistence hunters in Greenland have long held that
