Ursus maritimus

The polar bear is an animal that lives in the most northern seacoasts in the world.

## Evolutionary Theory

The ancestors of polar bears descended away from the brown bears between 150,000 years to 1.32 million years ago. Not a lot of polar bear fossils can be found due to the remains falling into the ocean or being eaten by scavengers, but some have been found.

## Interaction with humans

Polar bears have been interacting with humans for thousands of years. They would have been attacked and hunted cave humans. Northern living peoples such as Inuits have been hunting and being hunted by polar bears for thousands of years. Constantine John Phipps officially named the polar bears' scientific name, *Ursus martimus*, in a book of his northern expedition published in 1774. Polar bears were noted in a scientific study to be interested in attacking women on their period, unlike other bears.

## In media

*Spoilers!*

Polar bears are one of those animals that young children learn about in English-speaking cultures, and as such are one of the most famous animals in the world. Their pictures are depicted in many places, and their are many toys, especially teddy bears, that are white based off of them. They are featured in numerous ads, cartoons, movies, and books in many roles, as protagonists, side-characters, villains, and background characters. Young bears are characterized as cute and fuzzy, but adults are large and fiersome. When not fearsome, they are still noble and mature, sometimes quiet. In We Bear Bares, Ice Bear is a protagonist who demonstrates insane amounts of intelligence and skill, and refers to himself in third person. In The Golden Compass Iorek and the other bears are displayed as fearsome talking creatures with their own society whose armor is their "soul", important enough that they compare it to a daemon, a physical animal representation of a human's soul that dies when they do. In Zootopia they are portrayed as silent and gigantic guards for an Artic Shrew mobster. They are often featured in ads around Christmas time. The coca-cola bear was popular enough that I even had a toy of it. They are often in stories associated with winter-weather, which includes stories based around the holiday seasons. In Pokemon Black & White and Black & White 2, the monsters based off of them, Cubchoo and Beartic, are found during the winter season. In New Pokemon Snap they are found in the snowy region of the game. However in the anime they don't act like polar bears, being forest dwelling, pack-oriented frugivores. They even prefer to walk and run quadrupedal in contrast to their in-game desings as being upright, which is based off of grizzly bears tendency to temporarily stand upright. In a way, the anime versions are more like white, human socialized black bears instead of polar bears. Due to polar bears association with snow, ice, and winter, they are also commonly associated with penguins, despite the known fact that penguins live in the south pole, not the north pole. Polar bears dominate the media's perception of the arctic scene, with all other animals- even white wolves and walruses- living in their shadows.

In America, a white bear is almost synonymous to a polar bear. However this isn't so in other places. Japan seems to making a bit of a point with this, as a cartoon from 1987 features a mentally ill albino Grizzly Bear, and in the anime The Bears Bear a Bare Kuma the protagonist has an albino-like summonable virtual bear to ride on. Additionally Americans may be surprised to learn that American black bears can come in white without being albino.

In Tales And Traditions Of The Eskimo, originally published in 1866 Hinrich Rink details stories of the Inuits of Greenland. Amongst them are many polar bear stories. They are portrayed as fearsome animals with many roles, from being slayed to show a hero's strength, to were-bears, to a more impressive sleigh dog beside other fearsome mythical creatures. It is made vary apparent that though scary, people kill them for meat and fur. It is very apparent that they are not "nanooks" in the sense of being revered as bear-gods. In another book (also of Greenland Inuits) the werebears are featured again. Their lives end in tragedy and a she-bear eaten by dogs goes into the sky and becomes the Qilugtussat constellation.

## Religion

**Christianity:** Conservative Christianity has art depicting polar bears living in the hot climate of the Garden of Eden, to show that all of God's beasts lived there no matter the climates they live in outside of it.

## Conservation

There is much concern in the English-speaking world over the polar bear possibly going extinct. Due to climate change, the arctic poles have been melting for years. This has reduced their climate, and polar bears may find themselves struggling in warmer climates and human towns. One female polar bear demonstrated having a grizzly bear kink, and produced a number of pizzly bear hybrids until she died. Her children also demonstrated their mother's preference for brown bears.

## See also

* Bears
* Ursidae

## References

1. ↑ https://ielc.libguides.com/sdzg/factsheets/polarbear/taxonomy
2. ↑ https://archive.org/details/cihm\_28500/page/n271/mode/1up?ref=ol&view=theater
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 https://openlibrary.org/works/OL2686384W/Eskimoiske\_eventyr\_og\_sagn?edition=key%3A/books/OL677900M