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Let's learn about polar bears!
Big and covered from head to toe in white fur, polar bears are easy to recognize.
Adult males can reach weights of over 1500 lbs or 700 kg, and lengths of nearly 10 feet
or 3 meters, but females are much smaller.
Although individual brown bears have been recorded that outweigh the average polar bear,
polar bears are generally considered to be the largest bear on earth.
Polar bears are mammals, which means they are warm-blooded, have fur, and feed their
babies milk.
Polar bears live in the Arctic circle up near the North Pole, and are perfectly suited to
its cold temperatures and harsh conditions.
They have large feet to help spread out their weight on snow and thin ice, and the skin
on their paws is bumpy to give them a better grip.
Their claws are short and thick, giving them an even better grip on ice and slippery prey,
and their claws are also scooped on the underside for digging in the ice.
Polar bears can keep warm in their cold environment because they are insulated by up to 4 inches
or 10 centimeters of fat, and have two layers of fur: a dense undercoat, and an outer layer
of longer guard hairs that help trap their body heat.
You may not know that underneath their fur, a polar bear actually has black skin.
Their fur is not white, either: it is clear, and hollow in the middle.
When light shines on the fur, the hairs scatter the light and make the polar bear appear white.
Although they are born on land, they spend most of their time out on the sea ice, where
they can hunt their favorite prey, seals, which they hunt by smell.
Polar bears have such a good sense of smell that they can find a seal buried under 3 feet
or a meter of snow a mile or 1.6 kilometers away.
Polar bears prefer to hunt from the edges of the ice, but they are also strong swimmers
and have been recorded swimming for as many as ten days in a row for distances as far
as 220 miles or 354 kilometers.
Because polar bears spend so much time at sea, they are considered marine mammals like
whales, dolphins and seals.
Unlike most other marine mammals, polar bears have strong legs that allow them to walk on
land and run at speeds of up to 25 miles or 40 kilometers per hour over short distances.
Polar bears still live in most of their original range - more than any other carnivore on earth.
That is because people do not often live or build in areas where polar bears live due
to the harsh, cold conditions.
They live in only 5 countries - the United States, Canada, Russia, Greenland, and Norway
- and are protected in all of them.
Although polar bears are not endangered now, hunting, exposure to pollution, and loss of
sea ice they depend on to find food could put them in danger in the future.
I hope you enjoyed learning about polar bears today.
Goodbye till next time!