Polar bears in the Arctic look as if they are starving as one photographer captures an image of what seems like an undernourished bear with protruding bones and a prominent skinny physique. According to speculations circulating online, the culprit is climate change.
The photo was taken by Kerstin Langenberger, a nature photographer who set out on a trip to the Svalbard area of Norway. The said location is composed of a number of islands in the Arctic Ocean and is said to be frequented by tourists who want to see polar bears in their natural settlements.
According to Langenberger's caption of the famed photo posted on Facebook, climate change has become a big deal in the Arctic, and even if she does not have scientific evidence to back up her observations, she said that her eyes were able to see what is really happening and that she has her brain to draw conclusions.
Langenberger also observed that the females are specifically affected because they tend to remain with their young, giving them a harder time to look for food. She added that the fat bears that she had been observing were mostly males, which stayed on ice most of the time. As the ice recedes more and more each year, the females are stuck on land where there are limited supplies of food.
The photo she posted was actually a female polar bear, all thin and bony, attesting to her claim that she rarely sees beautifully plump bear mothers with fat offspring. She described the female polar bear she captured on photo as a "mere skeleton" that had an injured leg, potentially desperate to prey on a walrus while on land.
Posts and photos of thin or dead bears in the Barents Sea area are worrisome yet expected, given that the Arctic is warming, stated Geoff York from Polar Bears International.
People, however, should be slow to draw conclusions, Ian Stirling, an adjunct professor at the University of Alberta, who has studied polar bears for 40 years, told Mashable. Contrary to what the media portray, the bear photographed by Langenberger was most likely an old, sick or injured animal, not a mammal struggling to find available food or fighting against lack of ice.
Although the bear may be starving, it could also be old, he added. He also observed that it has an injured leg, which may be a factor to the bear's weight loss.
"I don't think you can tie that one to starvation because of lack of sea ice," he said.
