Polar Bears - Data, Pictures and Videos

[sanjay]

Question from Kika: "Do polar bears drink water and if so, where do they find it? Living in a frozen world does not supply a lot of liquid fresh water."

Answer from Dr. Thea Bechshoft:

Hi Lars – good question! Polar bears do indeed live most of their life out on the sea ice, surrounded by saltwater, which is no good for drinking. However, the bears have found a couple of ways to get around this lack of drinking water. The primary way polar bears get their water is – however odd it may sound - by eating as much seal fat as they can lay their paws on. When catching a seal, a polar bear will eat the energy-rich fat (blubber) first, often leaving the meat behind. There are several reasons for this, but one of them is that the physiological process of metabolizing (breaking down) meat protein requires water from the body, whereas the breaking down of fat actually releases water. In other words: the more fat the polar bear eats, the less water it will need to drink (if any at all). This holds true regardless of whether the bear is burning recently eaten seal fat or burning its own fat deposits.

Polar bears will also sometimes eat snow, but usually not in great quantities as it requires too much energy to melt it. In fact, eating snow tends to be something the bears mainly do when they want to cool down, for example after sparring/fighting or on a sunny day. And finally, I imagine that polar bears will occasionally have a drink or two at the freshwater melt ponds that can form on the sea ice during the warmer months of the year

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