Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 12/26/2009 6:15:16 AM PST by ricks_place
Arctic char is now on the bears' menu at the Polar Bear Habitat and Heritage Village in Cochrane.
The recent change was prompted by a university study of the polar bears' adaptability to various diets. Arctic char is part of the bears' natural diet in the wild.
Markus Dyke, who lived in Nunavut for 11 years and taught science at the Arctic College in Iqaluit, has been conducting the study for a PhD he's working on through the Department of Biology at Queen's University in Kingston.
Dyke said the idea for the study was triggered by environmentalists who suggest global warming and the subsequent melting of polar ice shelves could threaten the future of polar bears as a species. Polar bears in the Arctic live on ice all year round and use it as a platform from which to hunt and raise their young.
Seals and fish are their primary source of food in the Far North.
Dyke doesn't deny that an increased likelihood of polar bear drowning because climate change is warming the Arctic ice shelf.
"I'm not trying to debunk these theories," he said. "But some have a very bleak outlook on the future of polar bears. It's worth looking at the whole scenario.
"They are smart, opportunistic animals. There are some polar bear populations that may be able to survive better than others because they have the resources to feed on a variety of different diets."
Since August, Dyke has been conducting a series of trial diets at the Polar Bear Habitat, with Nanook, the male bruin at the Cochrane facility. There is also a female bear at the facility named Bisitek, but Dyke said she had some health issues and was not part of the study.
Over the course of a dozen days, Nanook was fed seal meat and fat. He was weighed, his feces analyzed and observations were made about his energy levels.
Similar data was collected over another trial period where he was fed Arctic char and then another period where he was provided with a diet primarily of blueberries.
Bears Change Menu is not correct.
Humans Change Menu of Bears is more like it.
Although "menu" implies a choice on the part of the diner.
So it should be:
Humans Change Rations of Bears
They’d grow fat and flourish on a nice, steady diet of environmentalists.
I stopped there because I want PROOF! Where are the drowned polars?
Where is the video of drowning polars? If they say it's so, then they must have proof!
Asshats.
Stupid study. With bears, everything is on the menu. Bears are eating machines. They are not picky.
From Wikipedia: “Arctic char or Arctic charr is both a freshwater and saltwater fish in the Salmonidae family, native to Arctic, sub-Arctic and alpine lakes and coastal waters.”
Ditka unimpressed
Did he take him to St. Alfonso's Pancake Breakfast?
No but he probably “took” the US government for a bundle in the form of a grant.
I caught six. The site cook did a great job of cooking them. I froze 4 and the following week I took my summer vacation. I flew to Winnipeg and then onto Minneapolis where I declared the fish while going through customs. The custom's inspector asked, "Could I have one?" I gave him one and he ignored the jewelry duty I owed.
When I got home to New Jersey I found that char was served at several up scale restaurants in NYC at an outrageous price, (more than Texas sirloin!). My Mom cooked the fish using a family Cod Fish recipie and we all had a stomach full!
Trivia.. What color is a polar bear's skin?
When an aircraft loader at JFK, I unloaded a large fish, from an Icelandic flight, that was part of the crew luggage. It's funny what goes on.
Trivia.. What color is a polar bear's skin?
Probably black.
Can you describe how a polar bear receives warmth if their black body radiates heat?
I don't know that skin color matters under that fur. IIRC, there's something to their hair follicles. Hollow hair follicles or something like that.
Something I need to look up is how animals, especially arctic animals, get vitamin D. Polar bears would get it, or much of it, from fish and fish-eating mammals. But what of other animals? From what little I've read, that also involves hair follicles.
I suspect that people starve their pets of needed vitamin D.
The Arctic ice grows and shrinks an enormous amount throughout every year. The polar bears seem to manage this changing amount of ice just fine. If GW were real and the ice receded a bit more than usual, what evidence is there they wouldn't be able to adapt. This is a stupid and naive non-scientific assertion seemingly without any facts to back it up.
Seals and fish are their primary source of food in the Far North.
So the bears dive off the ice and catch the fish?
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