Polar bear cubs are incredibly cute — and amazingly elusive. Their mothers dig dens under the snow in remote areas. Protecting cubs is key to the species’ survival. Under half of all polar bear cubs make it to adulthood.
To help understand the act of denning — essential to the species survival — a team of scientists for the first time combined satellite tracking collars on mother bears with remote cameras aimed at the bears’ snow lairs. They observed bears near Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago that straddles the Arctic and Atlantic oceans.
The team of researchers released video footage capturing almost a decade of the small white creatures’ arctic frolics, providing a rare look at how polar bear cubs behave when emerging from their dens. The footage helped scientists better understand the timing and behavior of the cubs emergence from their dens in a Journal of Wildlife Management study.
