There once was a young polar bear,
Who married a grizzly named Claire,
Now you meet them downtown with their stroller,
Showing off furry twins,
One pizzly and one little grolar.
I was interested to read recently that there are some new bears sharing our planet — not eating fruit from our backyard trees — but in Northern Canada. Polar bears are finding that smaller ice packs are limiting their hunting for seals at sea and they are forced to spend more time on land and are ranging further south into grizzly bear territory. At the same time, grizzlies are moving north to Wapusk National Park (it means white bear in Cree), on Hudson Bay in northeast Manitoba, one of the world’s largest polar bear maternity denning areas.
The grizzly and polar bears, which became distinct species about 200,000 years ago, are interbreeding and the cubs have characteristics of both parents. This might have been happening for longer than anyone knew. A pizzly, or grolar, white with brown patches, was shot by a big game hunter in 2006 on Banks Island, N.W.T. Tests showed this bear was a second generation hybrid, meaningful because hybrids are often not able to reproduce. Some hybrid bears have been known in zoos around the world where grizzlies, brown bears and polar bears are kept together.
Polar bears hunt from ice floes but they, and the hybrids, will eat reindeer, small rodents, seabirds and eggs and human garbage when on land, even showing a surprising ability to climb rock cliffs to get bird eggs, further changing the ecology of the north.
Whether a person believes that climate change is man-made or part of longer, natural cycles — there was a period similar to the present one, but warmer, called the Eeemian, about 130,000 to 114,000 years ago — it seems that the animals are doing their best to adapt.
Polar bears, about two-thirds of the world’s 22,000 polar bears are Canadian, survived that climate change and survived as the ice age glaciers came back and then retreated. We are presently in the Holocene geological epoch which began about 12,000 years ago and is considered an interglacial (warm) period in the current ice age.
Some people think that with climate change and interbreeding the polar bears will be extinct within 100 years and that the polar bears must be stopped from interbreeding to keep genetically pure. Well, how do you tell an amorous polar bear that he/she can’t be friends with the enticing grizzly because he/she is the wrong colour?
I asked a few people. The answers: “Teach them suspicion and hatred of any species other than their own.” “Wait at places where bear trysts might happen and encourage them to just say no (or at least give them condoms).” “Give them a government grant so that they can do a study and come to their own solution.”
I bet my Teddy bear these animals are instinctively smarter than we realize. They know change is happening and they are doing something about it — evolving and adapting to it so they can be sure to keep in the gene pool.
It is difficult to understand why people who marvel at the process of evolution when it takes place over hundreds of thousands of years don’t like it when they actually see it. Animals and plants, and indeed, people, will always change in ways that assure the survival of future generations.
As for keeping the species pure, who among us cannot go back a few generations in the family tree and find ancestors from a variety of backgrounds? We’re all hybrids and we’re healthier and better able to deal with change because of it.
I say we let the bears do what our forebears have done for centuries and turn our attention to things we can do something about.
The bears in the Arctic, and animals and plants around the world and our own area, are in immediate danger because of man-made industrial pollution that affects their health and ability to reproduce.
Let us turn our attention to making the natural environment safe for all creatures to live and evolve.
The Inuit have the best name for these new bears, nanulak, from nanuk (polar bear) and aklak (grizzly bear).
