polar bear

Today was the final day of the meeting. Dr. Joe Thompson (Franklin and Marshall College) spoke about oblique striated muscles, which get their name from the diagonal pattern formed by the location of the Z-lines. This type of muscle is common among cephalopods, nematodes, tunicates, molluscs, etc. Dr. John Whiteman (University of Wyoming) gave a fascinating talk about polar bears and whether hunting on the shore as compared to the sea ice helped the animals replenish stores after hibernation or fasting as well as how foraging patterns affected activity levels. Dr. Michael Butcher (…

If you happen to be in the Arctic this summer polar bears (Ursus maritimus) can be spotted spending their time on the sea ice or on the shore in areas where ice has melted. While it is difficult to study the physiology of bears living on the ice, it had been hypothesized that bears living on shore experience a state similar to winter hibernation in which they attempt to decrease their energy expenditure when food resources are low. However, new research published in Science shows that bears living on the ice as well as those on shore experience some decrease in activity as well as body…

You know that movie that came out a few years ago about the horse that lived during the depression and everybody was happy when it won the triple crown? Well that horse, or a horse just like it (fast, famous, dead) was stuffed and on display in a racing museum I visited when I was a kid, and nearby, was the horse's jockey, also stuffed. However, because the jockey was a person and wore clothing (and, in the case of jockeys, they were special colorful outfits that distinguished them from other jockeys) the actual jockey himself was spared the indignity and inconvenience of having his viscera…

A stuffed polar bear (Ursus maritimus), on display at the New Jersey State Museum.

I'm trying something new. Right from the start, I've always tried to write fairly long and detailed write-ups of new papers but this means that on any given week, there are always more stories than time and my desktop gets littered with PDFs awaiting interpretation. So, I'm going to start doing shorter write-ups of papers that don't make the cut, linking to more detailed treatments on other quality news sources. This is something that I hope science journalists will do more of. It stems from a Twitter conversation where I asked if I should (a) write up short versions of these stories, (b)…

I have pointed to the fact that mtDNA genetics has suggested that the polar bear is actually a derived lineage of brown bears. And, more specifically, that some extant lineages of brown bears share a more recent common ancestor with polar bears than other brown bears. In other words, brown bears are paraphyletic. Apparently there has been dispute of when the polar bear morph emerged from the brown bears. Luckily polar bears have been resident in a region where the likelihood of preservation of ancient DNA is relatively high. PNAS has a new paper which reports on the extraction of genetic…

tags: Polar Bear Versus Walrus Colony, nature, global warming, climate change, BBC, Planet Earth, documentary, streaming video This video documents an awesome fight for survival as a grown male polar bear takes on a walrus colony at the edge of the Arctic circle. This was a truly epic battle, phenomenally captured in high quality, from the BBC natural history masterpiece, Planet Earth. What surprised you most about this footage? I was surprised that the walruses did not work together to defeat/get rid of the polar bear.

One my friends lives outside of Anchorage, Alaska and recently had a black bear pay a visit to her backyard. Now her preschoolers are obsessed with bears. Minnow too has a bit of a bear obsession at the moment, though she hasn't seen any bears in their natural habitat. At school, she's been reading "We're Going on a Bear Hunt" and at home one of her favorite books is the "Berenstain Bear's Big Honey Hunt." Saturday morning, Minnow announced that we were going on a bear hunt, or maybe that we were going to look for bees that would, presumably, lead us to bears. We made it all the way to the…

There are nearly 7 billion human beings in the world, so I guess it shouldn't surprise us that there are adult women who decide to jump into a polar bear exhibit during feeding time. Right? When I saw this on CNN's front page one word that described the photo would be "compelling." If polar bears could talk.... (you can see some video here) This really needs to make it into a South Park episode in the future.

I've decided the "Daily Dose" is a bit misleading... seeing as I usually find something weekly. Meet Flocke.Yeah, this little girl is competing for cutest baby ever. And winning.

Imaginative but effective ads from the Buenos Aires Zoo. Via Toxel and thanks once again to Kevin Z. "Get Much More for Less" Ads "The Kangaroos Have Arrived" Ads Many more below the fold "Now We Are Open Late" Ads "115 Years" Ads Together Video (note that we cannot endorse the historical accuracy of this friendship...) Argentine readers please take note: I still do not have a shot glass from this zoo and Labor Day is coming soon, which is a HUGE gift giving holiday up here in the States.

Spent the day at the Brookfield Zoo and was lucky enough to catch a resident polar bear inventing games for himself and doubly lucky my fiancee brought a video cam. Polar Bear Takes a Dive Polar Bear Tossing Around His Toy More below the fold Polar Bear Balances Toy on Nose and Paw

Polar Bears (Ursus maritimus) have always been favorite animals at zoos and aquariums, but the current problem of anthropogenic global climate change has popularized them further by making them extinction's poster species. While many documentaries show the loss of ice as one of the primary factors that is threatening the bears, the overall rise in temperatures is having a more subtle (but widespread) impact on the unevenly distributed populations of bears. Polar bears have adapted to cold climate so effectively that they do not do well when temperatures exceeding 50 degrees Fahrenheit, and…