Longest Polar Bear Swim Recorded (2011) | Hacker News Reader

Longest Polar Bear Swim Recorded (2011)

news.nationalgeographic.com

36 pointssecondary9 comments

I had a chance to talk to an expert in non-invasive polar bear research. He believed that this, and most other polar bear studies, are deeply flawed because of how traumatic the data collection is.

Before this particular polar bear's swim, it was: (1) pursued by a helicopter until it couldn't run any more. (2) Shot with a tranquilizer dart. Did you know that large animal tranquilizers don't put the animal to sleep? They merely paralyze its muscles so researchers can work on it. So it's entirely awake but unable to move for step (3) Extract a molar with pliers, to estimate the bear's age. Also add a collar with a GPS tracker. (4) Let the paralysis wear off in captivity. (5) Release it.

So, pretty fucking traumatic. Polar bears are intelligent scavengers which means they're curious, but very danger-phobic. The fact that it swam for hundreds of kilometers afterwards doesn't prove anything about any normal behavior.

I'm going to need a source on that tranquilizer bit.. When giving a paralytic to a human, you need to have them attached to a vent in order to keep them alive and breathing, I'd be surprised to learn that bears react differently to paralytics. I'm under the impression they use opiods / benzos for large animal sedation.

I can't find a reference for polar bears, but it's probably the same as for grizzly bears where they use a mixture of Xylazine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xylazine) and Telazol (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiletamine), a dissociative in the same family as Ketamine. So not a paralytic, but the animal retains memory of the experience.

http://www.mammalogy.org/uploads/Cattet%20et%20al%202008.pdf documents the process of helicopter darting and reports substantial health and behavioral changes for weeks after capture.

I fear the imminent future of polar bears and this is a truly depressing story. But it should be noted it's from 2011, not new.

I think the OP was reminded of the 2011 media appearence because of recent research on the topic of longer distance swimming of polar bears: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ecog.02109/abstra... (abtract, full article is closed access)

Your view but on what basis? A cursory search seems to me to show that thanks to the difficulty of gathering evidence, anyone can find data supporting an increase or a decrease in their population.

Generally speaking large changes to a creature's habitat are challenging. The arctic is undergoing massive changes, including rising temperatures and a reduction in sea ice, necessitating longer swims, increasing energy expenditure without, it seems, an increase in the seals and the like which polar bears eat. Also, the frequency of twins appears to have dropped (though, again, this data is not easy to gather), and that seems to be a response to stresses.

Though not "news," the climate situation in the Arctic is only getting worse. Long polar bear swims are just the canary. The entire Arctic Ocean/tundra ecosystem is already racially altered. Climate change is hitting the top of the world first and hardest.

Expect ice free summers in the Arctic Ocean soon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_sea_ice_decline#/media/...

Also, if you are USA based, I highly recommend the good people at: http://www.alaskawild.org/. I'm no longer affiliated, but I know first hand that they are effectively pushing the Federal govt to pay more attention to the region. Your favorite climate focused NGO is generally a good use of resources, as they will pressure your elected and appointed officials on your behalf. While we all wait for Elon to innovate us out of the problem, I also recommend including climate/energy in your basket of issues when you go to the ballot box.

And yes, we have already dug ourselves a deep hole. We still have the collective choice to stop digging deeper.

The sad thing is the vast majority of our emissions could be described as discretionary, at least if you live a standard US lifestyle. We don't even need Elon to save us, we just need to live a lifestyle that plenty of people do already. We're possibly destroying Earth's ability to sustain civilization (not to mention cool stuff like polar bears and whales) so that a relatively small fraction of the Earth's population can have more stuff.

If you: * Eat less meat * Live in a place that allows you to walk or cycle for your daily trips (work, groceries, etc.) * Have two or fewer children * Use LED lighting, have good insulation, and don't live in the most hostile climates in the world (e.g. Phoenix or Siberia) * Source your electricity renewably, which can be as easy as changing providers and, at least in my experience, adds perhaps $10 or so to one's monthly bill

we'd be most of the way there. It's not like people haven't already shown you can have one fifth the carbon footprint of the average American and not be happy.

Unfortunately, if you _do_ live in the US, or really any place that was built in the last 60 years, you're essentially forced to live a high-carbon lifestyle unless you're fabulously wealthy or willing not to be part of normal society. There aren't very many affordable, walkable developments in places with job opportunities and housing. We've made it illegal to build them through single-use zoning and parking minimums. If we haven't done that, we (and SF is incredibly guilty of this) have made it basically impossible to expand existing walkable places by allowing homeowners to forbid the construction of new homes in their neighborhoods, which is about as logical as saying "I own a bicycle. I can get rich by making it illegal to build new bicycles and thereby increasing the value of my own, so I'm going to vote for just that."

There is no shortage of sprawling developments where houses are cheap and suburban roads heavily subsidized by the taxpayer, though, so that's where most people live. Of course, if you suggest taxes go towards funding rail or buses people shriek that it never pays for itself, but I hardly see I-5 turning a profit.

Fair disclosure: For all this, I am a hypocrite. I cared enough about the above to change continents, but I fly too much. It's shocking how much that emits, and some years it's 80-90% of my carbon footprint, if the online calculators are to be trusted.

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