Wow i didnt know about a lot of this stuff. The interbreeding is wack.
My mom loves polar bears. I am buying her a polar bear cookie jar for her birthday in two weeks.
BaD #2 : So ummm... Polar Bears!
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 On 02/04/2015 at 02:22 AM by Bilbasaur See More From This User » |
Due to sleepy Blake trying to convince me that there was polar bears in Antartica and they eat penguins, first "I got nothing, have facts and gifs" blog is on polar bears >>;
Polar Bears aren't really white. I'm like 90% sure everyone knows this one, but still. Their fur is colourless, and their skin black, and the white is from light reflecting off of the hollow pockets of hair inside each guard hair ouo
Their fur actually insulates them so well that they're more at risk of overheating than freezing.
Another thing about their fur? It makes them invisible to infrared cameras. They're so well insulated that they give off the same heat signature as the snow around them, save for their breath, nose and eyes.
The largest record polar bear weighed one ton. (2209 pounds for you crazy non-metric folks)
Keeping captive polar bears isn't a new thing either. The ancient Romans included them among the exotic animals for their gladiator sports, and Henry III kept a pet polar bear, which lived in the Tower of London, was led down to the Thames River to hunt for fish periodically, and came complete with a Norwegian keeper, courtesy of King Haakon of Norway.
They're amazing swimmers at 10kph / 6mph, and capable of going nonstop for over a week. As the sea ice melts they have to travel larger and larger distances to find land - the record is held by one female who crossed 687km / 426 miles in nine days. Her cub died during the swim, and she lost 22% of her body weight, something that will only become more common as the ice continues to melt.
Errrrmmmm, something less depressing than that... There are polar bear-grizzly hybrids? As the polar bears are forced south by the loss of ice, some are interbreeding with grizzly bear populations, producing fertile hybrids (as opposed to how many other cross-species offspring are infertile).
Which is awesome / terrifying. These hybrids aren't as suited to the Artic as polar bears, being less able swimmers and less suited to walking on ice, but may be better equipped to live on land.
Well, I think I've run out of facts but still have a few more gifs, so that'll do for this blog entry? Next one will either be an animal one or me having a rant about radical feminists and my adventures in finding out what TERFs and SWERFs are. Or maybe talking about games, idk.
So yeah. Bye guys!
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