What do polar bears eat?
Polar bears are predators, but they aren’t the only hunters in their ecosystem.
Polar bears mostly hunt for food to feed their own young.
Other times, however, they eat for themselves or to gain weight before hibernating.
Many of you may wonder what polar bears eat, but it might surprise you that scientists are still not positive.
Scientists believe that the diet of a polar bear is dependent on what they can find, or their prey.
What Polar Bears Eat
The food that is most important to a polar bear’s diet is ice seals.
But, it also depends on where in the world they are located along with other environmental factors.
These predators could also eat carrion, Arctic foxes, seabirds, waterfowl, crustaceans, and stranded beluga whales.
A polar bear eats what it can find.
Most of the time they eat seals that are already dead or killed by another predator.
Sometimes, however, they will hunt for themselves.
Scientists believe that a majority of their diet is made up of ringed seals due to their availability.
Polar bears are opportunistic predators that can be found in regions where their prey is abundant, which includes the Arctic ice that surrounds the land.
If they are not on land, polar bears will stay on moving ice sheets and fast until they find their next meal.
They typically spend more than half of their life fasting while waiting for the ice to freeze.
With all that said, if a polar bear’s traditional prey is not available they might look for other sources of food.
This includes eating bird eggs, carcasses, and some vegetation.
Even though scientists are unsure about the exact eating habits of polar bears, one thing that they do know is that polar bears need to eat a lot in order to gain weight before hibernating during the winter.
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