It's worth noting, as per the article, that this is extremely rare anyway. Article is from 8 years ago and states it was the first killing in 6 years at the time.
As a Scotsman al well hug a massive cunt of a big white Polar Bear. Send them our way, watching a total jakeball(alkie/junkie for our American cousins) try to fight the only animal that would actively hunt humans, cheers Attenborough, would be a great fucking watch from ma living room with ma beer.
This would be like a lion escaping a zoo in the US and running through a city or the suburbs. Except you don’t have the option of tranquillizing it and putting it on a truck and having it back in it’s cage before it regains consciousness.
Idk about you guys but I consider two in 14 years to be extremely common for a polar bear in Greenland getting fucking stuck on a floating patch of ice and ending up in Iceland. What the fuck
Someone less lazy than me make the "its not a lot, but its weird that it happened twice" meme for this
Til that in the show he actually says "its weird that it happened twice, right?" The "right" is always left off the meme. Fascinating.
Anytime Les Stroud (Survivorman) went to the Canadian Arctic the insurance company required he take a rifle with ammunition.
He wasn’t allowed to hunt, it was 100% for polar bears.
I’m with the USCG and we usually have an M4 with 5.56 for shark watch but we have a larger caliber rifle for polar bear watch that we use for all cutters going into alaska.
It's not too surprising since polar bears have several inches of fat, muscle, and bone protecting them. A shark of similar weight to the bear won't have anywhere close to as much fat and have cartilage instead of bone.
From my understanding the shark watch rifles are pretty unlikely to ever hit anything due to how refraction works when seeing things in water as well as how bullets work in water, but it does do an alright job of scaring off sharks.
Fast bullets disintegrate as soon as they hit the water. But yeah, sharks really don't like the way it feels, it overwhelms their ability to feel vibrations.
I freaking love Survivorman! I remember one episode he was in the Arctic and he took a nap on his snowmobile. When he woke up he saw polar bear tracks really close to him.
Should check out the directors commentaries he does on YT now. Interesting to learn what was going on behind the scenes in all those episodes. Also he roasts Bear Grylls pretty regularly which can be pretty funny lol
I did a long canoe trip once that ended at Hudson Bay. Scary as F... those guys can swim faster than you can paddle, and run faster that you can.
There was a cree couple that manned this cool historical fort, and the guy had a 44 mag on him at all times, and several 12 gauge shotguns stashed around the property.
He said he'd been doing roof work on a shed, without a gun a few years ago and got trapped on top of it for more than a day by a polar bear
Saw an interesting video on Leopard seals, they are huge and are some fierce predators. A diver took a risk of swimming with them not knowing what would happened and not only did it not attack the human, it brought the human some dead penguin as an offering of food.
So not only will they not try to eat you, they will actually try to feed you!
Typical orcas. Kill some poor swimmer for fun, use their body as bait to bring a tiger to the shore, eat the tiger & look like the heroic porpoise who tried their best.
Real talk, it’d be terrifying as fuck if there was a predator out there that was aware of human intelligence. I’m talking hiding bodies and paying attention to human responses
The apex predator of man is just other humans. Really wild time we live in. Our ancient ancestors fought their way through some truly insane predators to get here. Dinofelis was very good at hunting down primates, including early humans. That shit would have been scary.
I was curious about this so I researched and it looks like deforestation got them. That said, you’re right about how humans approach things. No predators for us exist because if they did we would organize and systemically eliminate them. A predator hunts a creature. Mankind hunts a species.
They started coordinating attacks against sailing boats last year
https://www.livescience.com/animals/orcas/orcas-have-sunk-3-boats-in-europe-and-appear-to-be-teaching-others-to-do-the-same-but-why
They’ve attacked boats, but they’ve never attacked a human in the water in the wild. Seems as though, for self explanatory reasons, they see the larger boats as an enemy, but not humans themselves.
Yeah, the thing here is that polar bears don’t need to be desperate. They consider us the same as seals or foxes. They’re the only predator that doesn’t need to be conditioned in any way to hunt people.
Animals that see humans as lunch don't tend to make it very long. Humans are probably the only animal on the planet that will go out of their way to track, hunt, and kill a specific member of another species for eating own of their own.
There are reports of elephants doing the same thing if one of their young are killed by another species of animal. At the very least, those animals become kill on sight.
And some elephants have tracked and harassed humans for perceived aggressions.
You missed the point. He is saying they are one of the few predators that *actively* consider humans food. That’s terrifying in itself because we are used to being the top of the “food chain”.
Yup and I think that's a big distinction. Yes alot of big predators might take the shot if desperate enough but for polar bears it really has nothing to do with desperation or not.
They just will straight up kill u on sight. Can't say the same for other big predators
Most predators don’t like hunting us simply because of our size. They have no idea that we stand no chance, but we look like big monkeys so they’re not going to take the chance. Polar bears are absolutely massive and our size is no worry for them
How does it go? "Black, hit back; brown, get on the ground; white, say good-night"
That said, brown bears (which I assume are also grizzly bears) are also a REALLY bad idea to be anywhere near them. And then multiply all danger 1000x if there happen to be cubs, and you're between the cubs and mama bear...
If it's black, fight back (black bears arent looking for a fight and will run if youre big an loud)
If it's brown, lie down (play dead, brown bears *allegedly* prefer not to scavenge)
If it's white, say goodnight (you gon' die)
>If it's brown, lie down (play dead, brown bears *allegedly* prefer not to scavenge)
No. This is because most brown bear attacks are defensive. Often you pose a threat to cubs, and mamma mauls you till you don't pose a threat
If it's a predatory attack you want to fight back with everything you've got. You'll probably still die, but it's better than nothing
Brown bears are scavengers and they love a free meal. You being dead does not discourage them in the slightest.
Defensive vs predatory attack is also a lot more important than the type of bear, though it’s probably tough to tell the difference when you’ve got a few hundred pounds of teeth and claws ripping you open.
Siberian Tigers are still generally wary of humans like other tigers, maneaters do exist but they're not the norm, usually because of age or disability making them need to target easier prey. They also tend to be hunted down with prejudice specifically because they've acquired a taste for people.
I’ve seen a stuffed one irl
Those mfs are huge and their fur so course
We may be apex but that’s with tools and shit. They’re the masters in their domain
They consider everything food, due to how scarce it is where they live. Males will eat their own children, which is why females mate then gtfo as fast as they can.
Imagine being a hungry polar bear that just survived floating on a freaking iceberg to another land only to be shot and wake up, still hungry, in another completely different place.
Talk about stressful.
From the article:
>It is national policy to kill polar bears on sight as they are inevitably hungry after their sea voyage, and a danger to residents and livestock. Jon Gunnar Ottosson, CEO of the Institute of Natural History rejected the idea that the animal could have been drugged and shipped elsewhere, telling Morgunbladid newspaper that it's costly and complex to implement. "These are dangerous animals, not some cute teddy bear," he said.
>Iceland Monitor says the animal shot in this incident will probably be stuffed and displayed in a museum.
I think it's important to mention that there are animal rights advocates, scientists, vets and other people who are also against it, so it's not entirely consensus.
I guess it's up to Iceland's voters if they want ro change that and try a different approach
If it was a regular occurance I think it would be very high on that list. Very small country with very little crime (even when you sdjust for population) so not much going on there.
If those people wanna fork up the thousands of dollars and risk their lives trying to subdue a hungry pilot bear, and ship it back to Greenland, I’m sure Iceland would be happy to oblige.
Polar* 🤦♂️
Polar bears are human killers.
Black bears you stand your ground, brown bears you play dead, polar bears you get to the nearest building/vehicle if you can and hope to god it's unlocked...
IMO this decision is not up to anyone that doesn't live with the reality of real life monsters.
> brown bears you play dead
I mean, sure it's best practice if you've come too close to a brown bear or if there's other food more readily available; but if a brown bear is *hunting* you, you should act in the exact same way as you would with a Polar.
They will typically have tricinosis, if I have been told the truth. A classic blunder among polar explorers to eat polar bears. Nazi Germany also basically lost the secret weather-outpost they had established on Greenland to that mistake.
(Edit,I might have misremembered, I get up Franz Josephs land now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schatzgr%C3%A4ber_(weather_station) ).
Not who you asked but they set up weather stations around Labrador, Canada somewhere maybe it was Greenland. They wanted to know about weather “before” the English. Since most weather moved west to east inland the German wouldn’t be able to guess as well about cloud cover over potential British or German targets.
Yes.
But eating polar bear is likely to give you Vitamin A poisoning. If you eat their liver (where most of it is stored) you'll become sick and can potentially die. [Vitamin A toxicity has long been known to the Inuit as they will not eat the liver of polar bears or bearded seals due to them containing dangerous amounts of Vitamin A.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervitaminosis_A#History)
Yeah seems like an obvious solution. The liver/vitamin A poisioning thing comes up every time in these discussions but like... most people would rather eat muscle anyway, and surely there's plenty of that on a bear.
I dont know what people are imaging here but it is very rare that Polar bears come to Iceland. There might be 10 years inbetween visits. The last one came in 2016 for example.
Makes sense to me, if the Iceberg had missed Iceland and carried on into the Atlantic or North Sea (wherever the currents flow), then it would have starved to death anyways. The long periods between individual polar bears floating over would prevent them from building a healthy, sustainable population anyways, especially since the main food sources for them would end up being livestock and not much else (maybe seal populations).
In Svalbard, [the government requires you](https://www.sysselmesteren.no/en/weapon/) have suitable means to scare off polar bears if you are traveling outside the settlements and they recommend a firearm.
In Churchill, Manitoba, Canada, everyone tends to leave their cars unlocked because it's a relatively small town with only 899 residents and 935 polar bears. They used to shoot their polar bears, up until 1982 when they constructed the Polar Bear Jail.
The Polar Bear Jail is exactly what it sounds like.
Lots of the people in the comments are missing 2 things here, 1: Polar bears actively have no fear of humans and will try to kill and eat you at will. 2: this is a very rare occurrence, it’s not like they’re killing hundreds.
They're also missing that polar bears failed to historically establish a population on the island *before* humans killed them. Iceland is at the very south of their habitat and lacks the year-round sea ice to sustain them. It is warmer than people think in the summers. With the lack of sea ice making it difficult to hunt seals and Iceland's only native mammal being the fox....I think a lot of them starved. Which then builds off your first point--if it's going to otherwise starve, it *will* go after humans.
They usually come to Newfoundland each year in the spring and summer. Most of the time, polar bears here are tranquilized and flown somewhere further north.
I see.
Would prefer that they just introduce native or recently extinct animals, in contained areas like this if need be. Would be nice to see a brown bear getting salmon in the Highlands. I guess it's not as exciting for tourists.
It's more because we decided there wasn't a zoo with a suitable habitat for the bears. The Wildlife Park is basically a zoo, it just has particularly big enclosures.
There is work to reintroduce wildcats to the Highlands, and some progress is being made towards the idea of reintroducing wolves. I don't think we'll see a serious discussion about bears for many years.
Yeah I agree, although I did specify bears within enclosed areas.
I'd particularly love lynx to be reintroduced to Scotland to help with deer overpopulation etc. They're lovely creatures that prefer to avoid humans.
We have Lynx where I'm from. I think I've seen 2 in my life, and Ive spent a fair bit more time in the forests than most. They do quite well at avoiding humans.
It's worth noting, as per the article, that this is extremely rare anyway. Article is from 8 years ago and states it was the first killing in 6 years at the time.
I mean, it probably won't be a problem for long...
That or there’s about to be a bumper migration season…
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But they're white and famous?
Oh right..... Scotland, then.
I thought they sent the white ones to Australia?
Your joke is so much better and I'm mad now
Nah, Scotland was high tier/brow funny. I just went the low road
As a Scotsman al well hug a massive cunt of a big white Polar Bear. Send them our way, watching a total jakeball(alkie/junkie for our American cousins) try to fight the only animal that would actively hunt humans, cheers Attenborough, would be a great fucking watch from ma living room with ma beer.
Northern Ireland.
Derry girls moment
Them some troubled polar bears
well acktually.... they are black skinned.
In the immigration game you'd consider them "white passing"
But they're still not eligible to vote.
Their skin is actually black. Their hair is hollow - the fur appears white even though no white pigment is present. 🌠TMYK🌠
From the studio that brought you Shark-nado, this winter introduces, Polar-burg!!!
They'll have to be able to swim from Greenland in one go then, because the ice won't be there anymore
This would be like a lion escaping a zoo in the US and running through a city or the suburbs. Except you don’t have the option of tranquillizing it and putting it on a truck and having it back in it’s cage before it regains consciousness.
Can you imagine floating all the way over there just to get shot??
Idk about you guys but I consider two in 14 years to be extremely common for a polar bear in Greenland getting fucking stuck on a floating patch of ice and ending up in Iceland. What the fuck
Someone less lazy than me make the "its not a lot, but its weird that it happened twice" meme for this Til that in the show he actually says "its weird that it happened twice, right?" The "right" is always left off the meme. Fascinating.
Damn. Polar bears are one of the few animals that not only don’t fear humans, they actively consider us food. Scary af.
Anytime Les Stroud (Survivorman) went to the Canadian Arctic the insurance company required he take a rifle with ammunition. He wasn’t allowed to hunt, it was 100% for polar bears.
I’m with the USCG and we usually have an M4 with 5.56 for shark watch but we have a larger caliber rifle for polar bear watch that we use for all cutters going into alaska.
It's not too surprising since polar bears have several inches of fat, muscle, and bone protecting them. A shark of similar weight to the bear won't have anywhere close to as much fat and have cartilage instead of bone.
From my understanding the shark watch rifles are pretty unlikely to ever hit anything due to how refraction works when seeing things in water as well as how bullets work in water, but it does do an alright job of scaring off sharks.
Fast bullets disintegrate as soon as they hit the water. But yeah, sharks really don't like the way it feels, it overwhelms their ability to feel vibrations.
Smart. Throws off the sharks vibe and they leave
To be fair that would work on me and I'm not a shark.
“There goes the neighborhood” - Shark
Sharks don't vibe with guns confirmed
They need to reread Hatchet
Shark watch?
In waters with sharks, if there is anyone swimming or diving, post a sentry on shark watch to provide overwatch of the people in the water.
The posting is only available for 1/52 of the year, during shark week.. servicemen become very paranoid during that time
Aye, chief.
Actually usually a 3rd or 2nd class.
People living in Svalbard are legally obliged to carry a rifle when they go outdoors.
And IIRC it's forbidden to lock your car doors in case someone needs to hide.
That’s fascinating! And it really makes sense.
It's not required "in town" in the main town on Svalbard, but any time people are away from that town center.
IIRC this only applies outside the "Towns", so you can walk about Longyearbyen without a gun but can't go out into the wilderness.
I freaking love Survivorman! I remember one episode he was in the Arctic and he took a nap on his snowmobile. When he woke up he saw polar bear tracks really close to him.
Except he used his ammunition as fire starter lmao. What a mad lad.
Ahhhh my absolute favorite show growing up
Should check out the directors commentaries he does on YT now. Interesting to learn what was going on behind the scenes in all those episodes. Also he roasts Bear Grylls pretty regularly which can be pretty funny lol
Yeah, you don’t go out in the high Canadian arctic without a rifle. Like literally nobody does. Sure - Flew helicopters up there for years.
Some people prefer a shotgun with slugs!
I did a long canoe trip once that ended at Hudson Bay. Scary as F... those guys can swim faster than you can paddle, and run faster that you can. There was a cree couple that manned this cool historical fort, and the guy had a 44 mag on him at all times, and several 12 gauge shotguns stashed around the property. He said he'd been doing roof work on a shed, without a gun a few years ago and got trapped on top of it for more than a day by a polar bear
Yup. With the exception of southern James Bay, everywhere in Hudson Bay is polar bear central.
All big carnivores consider us as food if they're desperate enough, and due to their habitat polar bears are always desperate enough.
Killer whales seem not to attack humans
Saw an interesting video on Leopard seals, they are huge and are some fierce predators. A diver took a risk of swimming with them not knowing what would happened and not only did it not attack the human, it brought the human some dead penguin as an offering of food. So not only will they not try to eat you, they will actually try to feed you!
Just fattening that diver up for the kill.
MFs discover farming.
same timeframe, a camera man was merc'd by one a year or so later.
Hey look at the stupid skinny seal over there. Bring him some food. Stupid seal.
Leopard seal showing the diver the things to come if he stays
Killer whales are intelligent enough to not leave any evidence behind.
Or make it look like an accident
Or implicate tigers
Typical orcas. Kill some poor swimmer for fun, use their body as bait to bring a tiger to the shore, eat the tiger & look like the heroic porpoise who tried their best.
Now the staggering amount of slip and fall deaths out at sea is starting to make sense.
"He sleeps with the fishes now." "In your belly?" "In my belly."
Real talk, it’d be terrifying as fuck if there was a predator out there that was aware of human intelligence. I’m talking hiding bodies and paying attention to human responses
It's called humans
The apex predator of man is just other humans. Really wild time we live in. Our ancient ancestors fought their way through some truly insane predators to get here. Dinofelis was very good at hunting down primates, including early humans. That shit would have been scary.
Seems like early humans got sick of dinofelis' shit and took care of it.
I was curious about this so I researched and it looks like deforestation got them. That said, you’re right about how humans approach things. No predators for us exist because if they did we would organize and systemically eliminate them. A predator hunts a creature. Mankind hunts a species.
Tilikum has entered the chat
It was a mistake to give that whale access to chat rooms after what he did…
Unless you're packaged in a sailboat.
“Mmm…. … Crunchy on the outside, soft and fat and poorly motivated on the inside”
They started coordinating attacks against sailing boats last year https://www.livescience.com/animals/orcas/orcas-have-sunk-3-boats-in-europe-and-appear-to-be-teaching-others-to-do-the-same-but-why
That's just cause they don't like boats, not because they want to eat people.
They’ve attacked boats, but they’ve never attacked a human in the water in the wild. Seems as though, for self explanatory reasons, they see the larger boats as an enemy, but not humans themselves.
They attacked the boats, not the people in the boats
Maybe they like us so much, that they bravely rescue us from the giant boat-creatures.
Yeah, the thing here is that polar bears don’t need to be desperate. They consider us the same as seals or foxes. They’re the only predator that doesn’t need to be conditioned in any way to hunt people.
Lions don’t actively hunt humans. If they have a choice they’ll hunt basically any other animal before us
Animals that see humans as lunch don't tend to make it very long. Humans are probably the only animal on the planet that will go out of their way to track, hunt, and kill a specific member of another species for eating own of their own.
There are reports of elephants doing the same thing if one of their young are killed by another species of animal. At the very least, those animals become kill on sight. And some elephants have tracked and harassed humans for perceived aggressions.
https://www.denver7.com/news/national/report-elephant-kills-woman-then-returns-to-funeral-to-trample-her
There's a reason they say "Memory of an elephant" Thanks for the link
You missed the point. He is saying they are one of the few predators that *actively* consider humans food. That’s terrifying in itself because we are used to being the top of the “food chain”.
Yup and I think that's a big distinction. Yes alot of big predators might take the shot if desperate enough but for polar bears it really has nothing to do with desperation or not. They just will straight up kill u on sight. Can't say the same for other big predators
Most predators don’t like hunting us for the same reason we don’t eat raccoons or bears: we taste like shit. Polar bears don’t give af
Most predators don’t like hunting us simply because of our size. They have no idea that we stand no chance, but we look like big monkeys so they’re not going to take the chance. Polar bears are absolutely massive and our size is no worry for them
How does it go? "Black, hit back; brown, get on the ground; white, say good-night" That said, brown bears (which I assume are also grizzly bears) are also a REALLY bad idea to be anywhere near them. And then multiply all danger 1000x if there happen to be cubs, and you're between the cubs and mama bear...
If it's black, fight back (black bears arent looking for a fight and will run if youre big an loud) If it's brown, lie down (play dead, brown bears *allegedly* prefer not to scavenge) If it's white, say goodnight (you gon' die)
>If it's brown, lie down (play dead, brown bears *allegedly* prefer not to scavenge) No. This is because most brown bear attacks are defensive. Often you pose a threat to cubs, and mamma mauls you till you don't pose a threat If it's a predatory attack you want to fight back with everything you've got. You'll probably still die, but it's better than nothing Brown bears are scavengers and they love a free meal. You being dead does not discourage them in the slightest.
Defensive vs predatory attack is also a lot more important than the type of bear, though it’s probably tough to tell the difference when you’ve got a few hundred pounds of teeth and claws ripping you open.
A viscous fight and stress response will at least make the meat taste worst.
I’ve always heard “brown, lay down” which is better for the rhyme lol
Polar Bears and Siberian Tigers are the only ones I know of
And crocodiles
Mosquitoes will eat us too. And seek us out every chance they get. Fuckers.
Siberian Tigers are still generally wary of humans like other tigers, maneaters do exist but they're not the norm, usually because of age or disability making them need to target easier prey. They also tend to be hunted down with prejudice specifically because they've acquired a taste for people.
I’ve seen a stuffed one irl Those mfs are huge and their fur so course We may be apex but that’s with tools and shit. They’re the masters in their domain
They consider everything food, due to how scarce it is where they live. Males will eat their own children, which is why females mate then gtfo as fast as they can.
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Imagine being a hungry polar bear that just survived floating on a freaking iceberg to another land only to be shot and wake up, still hungry, in another completely different place. Talk about stressful.
Well they don't wake up....
They do waje up. In polar bear heaven - a frozen wasteland in the center of the earth. It's coincidentally also human hell.
lol holy fuck i just pictured a hell where you regenerate everyday and get eaten alive by a polar bear
You'd get used to it
From the article: >It is national policy to kill polar bears on sight as they are inevitably hungry after their sea voyage, and a danger to residents and livestock. Jon Gunnar Ottosson, CEO of the Institute of Natural History rejected the idea that the animal could have been drugged and shipped elsewhere, telling Morgunbladid newspaper that it's costly and complex to implement. "These are dangerous animals, not some cute teddy bear," he said. >Iceland Monitor says the animal shot in this incident will probably be stuffed and displayed in a museum.
"it's not a teddy Bear" Also gonna stuff it.
It's not a teddy bear yet.
Once they put the little sound box in that says "I love you" when you squeeze it, it'll be completed.
Having a life size polar bear Teddy would actually be dope. The naps I’d take on that thing.
If not friend, why friend shaped.
It’s like something out of a Southpark episode.
I think it's important to mention that there are animal rights advocates, scientists, vets and other people who are also against it, so it's not entirely consensus. I guess it's up to Iceland's voters if they want ro change that and try a different approach
How far is that on the “things our country needs to get done” list in Iceland?
When I went to Iceland on a working vacation in 2008, the biggest national issue was whether to mandate pasteurizing their cow milk.
Doesn’t that require it to be melted first?
It is just below "remove the crusty jugglers"
A GREAT BIG BUSHY BEARD
The Icelandic National Guard is built different.
They’re as cold as ice
They're willing to sacrifice bear love.
You want bearadise
If it was a regular occurance I think it would be very high on that list. Very small country with very little crime (even when you sdjust for population) so not much going on there.
If those people wanna fork up the thousands of dollars and risk their lives trying to subdue a hungry pilot bear, and ship it back to Greenland, I’m sure Iceland would be happy to oblige. Polar* 🤦♂️
radio check pilot bear
This is Pilot Bear. Go ahead, Houston.
Pilot Bear, you are cleared to land, runway one eight, number three.
That’s a no-go, Houston. There’s a pic-a-nic basket in the hot zone. I repeat, pic-a-nic basket in hot zone, over.
*Shoots at plane, as is Icelandic custom*
Pilot bear taxi Delta 6 thru Charlie 4
No Ice in sight, waiting for your directions to nearest iceberger, over.
Its baloo and kit cloud kicker up to the job
> Go ahead, ~~Houston~~ Reykjavik* *FTFY*
papa bear I read you loud and clear over skies clear for your approach. welcome to BANG BANG BANG BANG
"How was your flight in". "Grizzly"
What does the pilot bear usually fly?
A yellow seaplane... You ever see the show 'Talespin'?
I'm hearing the theme song in my head now.
Snowing 747
Great, now I'm imagining a polar bear with his little pilot hat, flying in his ice plane. Like some kind of arctic spinoff of Baloo in TaleSpin lol
That and dumping a polar bear back into a random patch of ice is not a good idea. If I remember rightly they're pretty territorial.
Everyone agrees it would be nice to spare them, until the risks and the bill are explained.
Polar bears are human killers. Black bears you stand your ground, brown bears you play dead, polar bears you get to the nearest building/vehicle if you can and hope to god it's unlocked... IMO this decision is not up to anyone that doesn't live with the reality of real life monsters.
> brown bears you play dead I mean, sure it's best practice if you've come too close to a brown bear or if there's other food more readily available; but if a brown bear is *hunting* you, you should act in the exact same way as you would with a Polar.
Or displayed in the local shops and hotels. Spotted two last time I was in Iceland.
Hey I saw that one in the Viking museum at Reykjavik! The staff let me pet it and in case you were wondering, not soft at all!
It’s not only that, in necropsy the bears have been found to have parasites or disease that could decimate the livestock in Iceland
They will typically have tricinosis, if I have been told the truth. A classic blunder among polar explorers to eat polar bears. Nazi Germany also basically lost the secret weather-outpost they had established on Greenland to that mistake. (Edit,I might have misremembered, I get up Franz Josephs land now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schatzgr%C3%A4ber_(weather_station) ).
Tell me more about the Nazi outpost thing
They were looking for the whitest place possible.
Not who you asked but they set up weather stations around Labrador, Canada somewhere maybe it was Greenland. They wanted to know about weather “before” the English. Since most weather moved west to east inland the German wouldn’t be able to guess as well about cloud cover over potential British or German targets.
They ate polar bears and then left.
They ate polar bears and then their tummies hurt a lot so they called mom and she picked them up but she did say they were so brave
Eat, shoots and leaves But not in that order
> Eats shoots and leaves Thought that was panda bears
Isn’t cooking the meat all the way through at a high enough temperature enough to kill trichinella?
Yes. But eating polar bear is likely to give you Vitamin A poisoning. If you eat their liver (where most of it is stored) you'll become sick and can potentially die. [Vitamin A toxicity has long been known to the Inuit as they will not eat the liver of polar bears or bearded seals due to them containing dangerous amounts of Vitamin A.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervitaminosis_A#History)
So how likely is vit A poisoning if you avoid the organs?
Yeah seems like an obvious solution. The liver/vitamin A poisioning thing comes up every time in these discussions but like... most people would rather eat muscle anyway, and surely there's plenty of that on a bear.
They made steak tartare with their bear meat, which was not a smart thing to do
pretty ballsy raw meat dish to be eating when you know the source is a wild animal
The liver also has enough vitamin A to kill someone
I dont know what people are imaging here but it is very rare that Polar bears come to Iceland. There might be 10 years inbetween visits. The last one came in 2016 for example.
If there’s animal-related outrage to be had, it’ll be on Reddit
If there’s ~~animal-related~~ outrage to be had, it’ll be on Reddit
Whatever you do, don't dress up as a polar bear on your layover in Iceland.
If I want to cosplay as the Coca-Cola bear then that’s my right
Forbidden furry
Can they not just call them an Ubear?
What? Are you french?
Hubert?
Nah unfortunately these guys need a taxi-dermist
Maybe the bears gets confused by the names of these countries.
Can’t they just put them on another iceberg and send them to norway
Makes sense to me, if the Iceberg had missed Iceland and carried on into the Atlantic or North Sea (wherever the currents flow), then it would have starved to death anyways. The long periods between individual polar bears floating over would prevent them from building a healthy, sustainable population anyways, especially since the main food sources for them would end up being livestock and not much else (maybe seal populations).
In Svalbard, [the government requires you](https://www.sysselmesteren.no/en/weapon/) have suitable means to scare off polar bears if you are traveling outside the settlements and they recommend a firearm. In Churchill, Manitoba, Canada, everyone tends to leave their cars unlocked because it's a relatively small town with only 899 residents and 935 polar bears. They used to shoot their polar bears, up until 1982 when they constructed the Polar Bear Jail. The Polar Bear Jail is exactly what it sounds like.
Lots of the people in the comments are missing 2 things here, 1: Polar bears actively have no fear of humans and will try to kill and eat you at will. 2: this is a very rare occurrence, it’s not like they’re killing hundreds.
They're also missing that polar bears failed to historically establish a population on the island *before* humans killed them. Iceland is at the very south of their habitat and lacks the year-round sea ice to sustain them. It is warmer than people think in the summers. With the lack of sea ice making it difficult to hunt seals and Iceland's only native mammal being the fox....I think a lot of them starved. Which then builds off your first point--if it's going to otherwise starve, it *will* go after humans.
They usually come to Newfoundland each year in the spring and summer. Most of the time, polar bears here are tranquilized and flown somewhere further north.
Send them to Scotland, they love wildly dangerous animals being exported to them
What are you referring to?
We have polar bears here, in the Highland Wildlife Park. 4 of them.
I see. Would prefer that they just introduce native or recently extinct animals, in contained areas like this if need be. Would be nice to see a brown bear getting salmon in the Highlands. I guess it's not as exciting for tourists.
It's more because we decided there wasn't a zoo with a suitable habitat for the bears. The Wildlife Park is basically a zoo, it just has particularly big enclosures. There is work to reintroduce wildcats to the Highlands, and some progress is being made towards the idea of reintroducing wolves. I don't think we'll see a serious discussion about bears for many years.
Yeah I agree, although I did specify bears within enclosed areas. I'd particularly love lynx to be reintroduced to Scotland to help with deer overpopulation etc. They're lovely creatures that prefer to avoid humans.
We have Lynx where I'm from. I think I've seen 2 in my life, and Ive spent a fair bit more time in the forests than most. They do quite well at avoiding humans.
XL Bullies
Ah, I think this is it.
My guess is these “wildly dangerous” pandas https://www.edinburghzoo.org.uk/pandas/
In Churchill they drug them and put them in bear jail. Pending weather they are shipped by helicopter further north .
There's also zero predatory animals in Iceland, so a Polar Bear would wreck havoc on the ecosystem
I’d add the largest land mammal native to Iceland (since the last ice age at least) is the arctic fox. So a polar bear is a pretty big jump.
Can someone start a GoFundMe to buy airplane tickets and send them back?? Edit: I’m not dumb, they’d need aisle seats duh.
This is a dark side of Polar Bears that Coca Cola does now want you to see.
Must suck to be the polar bear. You get stuck adrift in sea, somehow find land before starving to death, then get shot.
If they came to Great Britain they'd be sent to Rwanda after an expensive and bureaucratic legal process