The soles of the feet have small papillae and vacuoles like suction cups to make them less likely to sli p on the ice. The polar bear is the largest land carnivore alive in the world today. The preferred habitat of polar bears is the annual ice adjacent to the shorelines of the continents and archipelagos throughout the circumpolar Arctic. Wind and currents create cracks in the ice that concentrate the seals they h unt. In areas such as Hudson Bay, where the ice melts completely for a few months in the late summer and fall, bears spend the summer on land, resting to conserve energy and waiting for freeze-up.
Males tend to remain along the coast, while family groups and subadults go further inland.
The farthest south that polar bears live all year round is James Bay in Canada, which is about the same latitude as London, England. During winter, when the polar ic e pack extends further south, polar bears move as far south as Newfoundland and into the northern Bering Sea. They then move back north as the souther edge of the pack ice recedes throughout the summer. Litters of four cubs have been reported, but are extremely rare and it would be unlikely for all the cubs to survive. They have large overlapping home ranges but do not defend territories.