Ella F. Mosby.
POLAR BEAR.
(Ursus maritimus).
THE POLAR BEAR.
(Ursus maritimus.)
The Polar Bear is the only aquatic member of the family being often called Sea Bear, as the scientific name (Ursus maritimus) signifies. It is practically confined to the arctic zone, although various unwilling visitants have come as far south as Iceland and Newfoundland on the floating cakes of ice. In size the Polar Bear ranks next to the grizzly, with a doubt, perhaps, in his favor. He has the longest neck of any bear and finds it very useful in catching seals and fish under water. The coat is a silvery or creamy white, very long and thick, as might be expected in an animal which swims about in the Arctic Ocean and rests upon cakes of ice. The soles of the feet are very long and are covered with thick fur, which gives it a large unslippery surface, and enables it to climb over ice with facility.
The food of the Polar Bear consists principally of fish and seals, but the walrus often falls a prey to his strength and cunning, and when starved this Bear is known to eat marine grass in large quantities. Carcasses stranded on the beach, dead whales and marine animals afford him an opportunity to gorge himself to the utmost and make enough fat to keep out the chill of arctic waters. So fat do these great bears become that the pregnant female is able to bury herself in the snows of winter and hibernate, at the same time suckling her cubs until spring. The males do not hibernate, but may be seen all winter.
In hunting seals the Polar Bear enters the water at some distance from where his prey is basking on the ice and swims with great rapidity toward it, keeping well under water and raising the tip of his nose to the surface at intervals for breath. At last it rises beneath and in front of the seal and strikes it where it lies, or if it escapes into the water, captures it with ease, for he is a very rapid and expert diver. One has been known to dive from a block of ice and capture a passing salmon as deftly as a kingfisher catches a minnow.
In Greenland the Polar Bear is known to swim from island to island along the shore, eating the eggs and young of the innumerable birds which nest there.
Jacques Cartier, the French navigator, in the narrative of his voyage to Newfoundland in 1534 gives a wonderful account of the Polar Bear’s fondness for birds and eggs and the efforts which he will make to procure them. An “Island of Birds” was discovered off the coast of Newfoundland, “and albeit the sayd island be fourteen leagues from the maine-land, notwithstanding beares come swimming thither to eat of the sayd birds, and our men found one there as great as any cow, and as white as any swan, who in their presence leapt into the sea, and upon Whitsun Munday (following our voyage to the land) we met her by the way, swimming toward land as swiftly as we could saile. So soon as we saw her we pursued her with our boats, and by maine strength tooke her, whose flesh was as good to be eaten as the flesh of a calf of two yeares old.” Captain Sabine reports having seen a Polar Bear swimming strongly forty miles from land and with no ice in sight upon which to rest, so the statement of Cartier is perhaps true. Very few cows weigh fifteen hundred pounds, but this is the recorded weight of Polar Bears, “as great as any cow,” killed by whaling crews in the arctic seas.
In hunting the Polar Bear the Eskimos usually pursue them with dogs and having surrounded them, kill them with spears and harpoons, while they fight the dogs. In the water the Polar Bear is generally able to escape by swimming and diving and often it happens that by his strength and quickness he overturns boats and mangles the occupants before they can be rescued. The skin and fat of the Polar Bear are more valued by the natives of the north than his flesh, which is both fibrous and strong in flavor. The members of various arctic expeditions have been glad to eat it, however, Dr. Kane in particular, having had his life and that of his comrades preserved for some time by the meat from the carcass of a great bear, which fell into a trap baited simply with an old and greasy stocking. Whenever possible his men shot the bears on the ice, and many pathetic scenes were witnessed by them when the mothers of cubs were killed or when the cubs being slain, their mother refused to leave their bodies, even when wounded. So great is the affection of these bears for each other that when one of a pair is killed the mate remains by the body, fondling and caressing it and trying to tempt it by food and endearments to rise again.