Complete Polar Bear Facts

Seeing a polar bear Visiting polar bears Many people will only ever see a polar bear in a zoo or an aquarium, but some will travel up north to a place like Churchill in Manitoba, Canada and see the polar bears in their own environment.
As long as people respect the bears' space, both the people and the polar bears are safe and happy. Taking a Tundra Buggy out to see the polar bears is a safe and fun way for people and polar bears to be close. The best way to see a wild polar bear up close is to be very quiet and wait for them to visit you. Remember to keep your hands away from them! Click here to learn more about Tundra Buggy Tours www.tundrabuggy.com
Scientists and polar bears Scientists will catch and release polar bears to learn more about them. Scientists and researchers will use a helicopter to find the bears and shoot a dart at them. The dart doesn't hurt them any more than getting a needle at the doctor's office hurts us - just a little pinch for a second. The dart has a drug in it which makes the bear go to sleep. Then the scientists land the helicopter and study the sleeping bear. They can weigh the bear, and take a tooth to find out how old it is, clip some fur and check to see how healthy the bear is. The polar bear will usually get a tattoo on its lip and tags on its ears. This is done so that if the bear is caught again, they already know how old the bear is, and they can see if the bear is gaining or losing weight.
Some female bears get radio collars in the spring, so that scientists can follow the bear using satellites. Only female polar bears get radio collars, because they fall off a boar's head too easily. Learn more about a polar bear's body parts here. Before the bear is let go, the researchers take some hair dye and put it on the bear's back to mark it. This way, if they see the bear again soon, the scientists will know not to catch that bear again. It is very expensive to catch a bear. It costs about $1000 for each bear, which pays for the people, the equipment and the helicopter ride.

Polar bear attacks Polar bears are one of the few animals that consider humans as food! When people start moving into a polar bear's home range bears can kill people, but more often, people kill bears. It is usually the young bears or sows with coys that attack people, because they have the most trouble finding food. These are also the same bears that come to find food scraps at the town dump. Instead of killing the bears, there are specially made bear traps that just lock the bear inside a cage. The bear is then taken to be let go far away or later on.

Seeing a polar bear