Despite being among the most famous animals on the planet, polar bears are also a mystery: it is one of the most complicated species to study, at least in nature. This is because it is not easy to identify them and follow them, in particular in certain stages of their life: the most infamous in this sense is the period between the birth of puppies and their weaning – Or rather, the moment when the family leaves the den and ventures into the world. Mystery finally revealed by a study published on Journal of Wildlife Managementwhich tells Six years of observations of polar bears carried out with a new method (and particularly effective).
How do polar bears spy on? The team that conducted the study is Canadian, of the University of Toronto, and began his monitoring work in 2018 13 members of the population of white bears of the sea of Barents. The specimens were all equipped with radio control. The team also installed nine cameras in as many known lairs, all located in the Norwegian archipelago of the Abbish.
The combination of these two elements has made it possible to identify the moments of activity around the lairs and to associate them with the individual specimens: in this way, the Canadian team managed for the first time to film the period known as “Denning” (from “Den”, Tana) – that, in fact, in which The mother begins to grow puppies without ever moving away from home.
Preparatory period. The period of dennging It is particularly hard for female polar bears: he begins with his mother who seals himself inside a den, and there he gives birth to the puppies – losing in the process about half of his body weight, which will have to regret with difficulty in the following months. The observations of the Canadian team revealed that, during this period, The mother abandons the den every now and then, for short “trips” that last on average half an hour And that rarely bring it more than 40 meters from home.
During some of these trips, the mother is accompanied by puppies, with a growing frequency as the temperatures rise. The dencing therefore serves, according to the authors of the study, ad acclimatize polar bears puppies to the outside worldbefore officially going out into the world e learn to survive.
