Starving Polar Bear Photographer Couldn't Help And Explains Why
On December 7, National Geographic published a video of a polar bear scavenging for food on dry land in Baffin Island.
Cristina Mittermeier, co-founder of SeaLegacy, and one of the National Geographic photographers and videographers there that day. The picture above was taken by her as well as the pictures below.
According to her article on National Geographic they were stationed at a nearby camp where they watched the poor bear foraging for food through trash cans. She made a valid point of not getting too close to feed a STARVING polar bear, but in my opinion, why not ? There's not much energy for him to run off nor was he healthy enough to keep up with a healthy human being running at 28MPH. In saying that, it is only my opinion.
Cristina Mittermeier decided to take the proper steps for the world to see the living conditions and the change in their environment. It has sparked major concerns about climate change and the deaths it can leave behind as well as changing our everyday lives. If you happen to be one who believes in climate change.
Polar Bears rely on ice to hunt, but due to the climate change some of these beautiful creatures will wander into human territory. The main fight in the video aside from the obvious is climate change, and even though they can't CONFIRM they are pointing their fingers towards climate change.
It is a very harsh video to watch that will leave a knot in your throat as 59 second video plays. With his fur covered in dirt, bones protruding, he walk on hours away from imminent death.
How do they know the Bear was starving? Was an autopsy performed after the bear died? I need to watch the video 😆
Edit the bear is foaming at the mouth he looks sick...he may be dying but there could be so many reasons why...
Exactly. My family and I went through the sadness of watching one of our pet cats wasting away to starvation a couple of months ago, despite the abundance of food that was available to him. He would meow for food all the time, but then just lick the surface without swallowing when you gave it to him. It turned out that he had intestinal cancer that was preventing him from eating. He only survived for his last month or so because the vet prescribed prednisone and my wife and I were loading him up with fluids under the skin and force-feeding him with baby-food and pureed cat food in syringes three times a day. In the end, even that care wasn't enough. He couldn't even stand under his own power and looked just about as emaciated as that bear when we took him to the vet for his last visit.
Just yesterday, we had to put down a nine year old German Shepherd Dog because of a degenerative condition that prevented her from moving around very much (probably hip dysplasia). She developed compression sores, and those got infected. If she had been a wild animal, she would have been unsuccessful at hunting and starved to death months or years ago.
It is heart breaking to see, but animals have been getting sick or injured and starving to death since long before climate change became a concern. If I had to guess, I'd bet that the bear was far more likely to be starving as a result of a more traditional illness or injury than from climate change.
I grew up on a farm and saw many sick animals that looked like they were starving to death. I find the video pulling at emotions without any data, big red light for me!
The sad music that accompanies the video is telling. Also, look how (s)he is opening/closing the mouth repeatedly from 0:35 until the end. A bear is not a dog, but I found this, Causes of Dog Opening and Closing Mouth Repeatedly
Causes include:
Between that and the foaming at the mouth that you noticed, I think it's very plausible to think that the underlying problem here was some sort of illness. Too bad NatGeo apparently didn't bother to get a veterinarian's opinion.
I know but it's really sad to see a wild animal suffering...I grew up in the wild and it's tough. Nature is divinely indifferent to the cycles of birth, death, and illness....unlike us humans.
Clearly the bear was hungry, and whether or not its suffering was ONLY due to hunger, we know many bears are dying of starvation because of studies like this: “In 2002, a World Wildlife Fund report predicted that climate change could eventually lead to polar bear endangerment or extinction. Even then, the report found that polar bears were moving from ice to land earlier and staying on land longer, unhealthily extending the bears' fasting season. By the end of summer, most bears studied by the World Wildlife Fund showed signs of starvation.”
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/12/polar-bear-starving-arctic-sea-ice-melt-climate-change-spd/
The bears hind end was damaged, he/she may have gotten into an accident of some kind and can't hunt. He or she could be very old, they only live 15 years in the wild...It's rough out there! As for climate change, it's always changing. When I was growing up we where heading for a mini ice age.
My ex husband hunted bear and cougar with hound dogs, over in the Eagle Creek Wilderness area near Mt Hood Oregon and I grew up playing in the wilderness. Just taking a walk without being aware can get you killed. It's that way for wild animals as well. You don't live long out there, it is kill or be killed.
My family also went fishing up in Alaska, ice growth and decline has many cycles within cycles and we humans have short attention spans and don't live long enough to figure out the cycles unless our elders remember. All our elders that held that information are dead and now we have to depend on deceptive government, politicized science, and scientist that need to pay their mortgage.
What I don't like about anthropomorphic climate change is carbon credits giving those who can afford to buy credits the right to pollute. Which has nothing to do with saving the polar bear and everything to do with controlling our global markets killing off our small businesses and giving the transnational corporations a free playing field.
Carbon credits are, like most government regulations, a well-meaning attempt at dealing with a tragedy of the commons - the polluting of a common resource (the atmosphere) that no one person or country owns and yet we all depend on.
A brief rundown in case you're not aware - a tragedy of the commons is a type of market failure - where the free market fails to price something (fossil fuels) high enough to accurately reflect all the negative costs it has on market participants (or innocent bystanders).
In my opinion governments stepping in to raise the price of carbon emissions won't go as planned (stakeholders will corrupt the process somewhat), but we should attempt to achieve a net positive result.
As for climate "always changing", time frames are important. What do you mean that when you were growing up we were heading for a mini ice age? According to indicators like tree-rings and ice layers the planet's climate has been fairly stable since the last mini ice age in the 16-1700s.
The have been more and more polar bears each year. They are not at threat at all.
That is tough to watch. And it's tough to imagine how even a reporter would not want to get involved and help in some way. I understand the importance of distance and of telling the story, but why not tell it and then help?
I don't think the reporter is carrying enough food to keep him alive. plus, you have to understand that when an animal is in a starvation state there is a special diet to follow... dropping a leg of deer or half a seal next to him won't save him it might not even be able to chew it. This was is faith there was nothing the crew could do, it's tragic that's what it is... but it's also real and unfortunately he wasn't the first and won't be the last.
Good points. One could argue that feeding the bear also would simply postpone the inevitable and that it may bring the bear even closer to human habitation (if there were any nearby) if it became accustomed to scraps. But still...
Yes! and if they're even that concerned about the polar bear, why not help and then tell the story of how they nursed it back to health...
That would be ideal in nature!!!
I can see a lot of people commenting and blaming humanity for this. I absolutely understand why and agree on the point that global warming/weather changes are affecting the amounts of food available to wild animals especially in colder parts of the world due to migration and late springs/early winters, but there's one thing we have to understand. This is how nature works. Humans are used to help and support each other but it would be a very rare occurrence to see something like that to happen in the wilderness. Old, sick or weak animals don't get healthcare, cash out their 401k and live the rest of their lives somewhere in a small forest retreat, they are left to die, sometimes naturally like in this case, sometimes they're killed by a stronger animal or predator. Nature is beautiful but it's definitely not kind or caring.
Climate change is definitely real and a constant factor; global warming - not necessarily.
However, we don't know what's wrong with this bear and an illness is as likely a cause of his problems as any other.
I agree. I hope we are not past the tipping point.
Oh, poor thing. We all expect the reporter to have given some food to the bear. But we seem to forget or are just profane to why the polar bear is scavenging for food on land, it is no secret that the arctic which is the home of these creatures is suffering environmental degradation caused by human induced activities.
While a healthy environment and a striving economy can exist in perfect harmony, we need to as a matter of emphasis, drastically reduce activities causing harm to the climate by using renewable energy. Use solar panels instead of generators as third world developing countries are advised to do, reuse, reduce, recycle should be our watch word and thus give us a healthy environment.
You and I don't want these bears joining us at home, I can only imagine what it will be like.
The polar bear needs at least 2kg fats per day to enable it function, if the seas that should produces the walruses and other aquatic creatures that bears feed on are filled with plastic and dumping from our sewers then, there won't be enough food for these bears. I once saw a report on CNN on some group of persons doing a clean up of the ocean in an attempt to rid it of plastic, this I think is a step in the right direction.
Its a collective effort to protect the environment.
Well said, @dee13. I can't believe so many people have missed the point of this video. The reporters can't save this polar bear, and this isn't the only polar bear suffering like this. This sad animal is in horrifying conditions and it doesn't just need a few meals, it needs its ecosystem back! Polar bears need ice and snow. It's no secret that these animals' homes have been degraded at a rapid rate because of climate change. We can't save this individual animal, but these images are supposed to make us as a society realize that we need to make sweeping changes to decrease climate change.
They just stand there filming. I wanted to see the camera drop and feet walking towards the bear with food in hand. Or throw it to him!
But no. We get sad violin music and guilt trip. @ironshield
A sad but significant post. Thank you for this. It is time to wake up and for everyone to accept the truth about human interaction with the world. Upvoted and followed for sure!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Guidestones
sad to watch my friend
oh poor bear
a harsh reality that the human being must accept and repair.
As technology develops, toxic gases weaken the osono layer, thus affecting both the animal kingdom and human life.
you must create awareness of this by taking this good post as an example.
This is just so heart-breaking. Polar bears should be living in a land full of ice and have seals or fishes be their food. Was the land covered in ice before? (Sorry, I did not watch the video).
Anyway, one of the contributors to this sad scene is climate change, which is man-made. Hopefully, that polar bear can be given food or treated somehow (it looks so thin). Lastly, thank you for raising awareness!