Culture
Reasons to Fear the Polar Bear
Heave writer Adam Cowden has a lot of stuff that he’s written for Cracked that didn’t get in, but nevertheless should be seen by the masses. We’ll be picking up some of it. Today, he’d like to teach you about polar bears.
The WWF would have you believe that polar bears are cute, oversized stuffed animals that desperately need your help. In reality, the only thing the polar needs or wants from you is your complete and utter destruction, and, for that matter, the complete and utter destruction of everything in its path. If you plan on “adopting” a polar bear, here are a few reasons to make sure that someone else will be raising it.
1) Polar bears are the only animals that actively hunt humans.
Polar bears are thought to be the only animal to actively hunt humans. According to Ed Zebedee, the director of the Government of Nunavut’s protection services, “Polar bears are the only animal that will definitely stalk a human and eat them. Nobody goes out on the land here without a gun.”
You know when you’re watching an Animal Planet special on lions, and the Australian guy who’s standing too close to the pack loudly says, “They’re actually more afraid of us than we are of them!”? Not so with the polar bear. They have a reputation for having “no fear of humans,” probably due to their natural habitat usually being far removed from human civilization.
You know when you’re watching Shark Week, and they show you the glorious 3D-rendered simulation of the attack, and the guy says, “To a shark, from below, the surfer on his surfboard looked just like a really big fish!” Polar bears don’t make that mistake, but they’ll eat you anyway. They have a nearly omnivorous diet, and will stalk and prey on humans, especially if they are hungry. Oh, and they’ll have an easy time doing it. Other than one subspecies of grizzly bear, they are the largest land predator, and a single swipe of a claw can be enough to kill you.
Just how often does this angel of arctic death strike? Well, fairly rarely. During a 20-year period in Canada, six deaths and 14 injuries were reported. 15 of these incidents were “considered to be acts of predation by the bear, and one by a polar bear defending her cubs.” The rarity human/polar bear contacts means that the chance of being killed by one is small, but if you do encounter one…well, don’t worry too much, because it will probably have snuck up from behind and killed you already.
2) Forget about Jaws, polar bears are the most terrifying animals in the open water.
The polar bear’s body is naturally adapted to swim in cold, arctic water, and their scientific name, ursus martitmus, actually means “maritime bear.” When it comes to swimming form, polar bears do it “doggy style,” using extra-large forepaws to propel them forward. Their hind paws, meanwhile, are held flat and used as steering rudders. If you think that sounds like it would look funny and awkward, like it does when you throw your puppy in the pool, keep in mind that polar bears can pretty easily attain a swimming speed of 6.2 mph, which means they could easily outrun and devour your dog. Or you, for that matter; the fastest ever recorded human swimming speed (for a paltry distance of 50m) is about 5.3 mph.
Before increasing global temperatures caused polar ice to melt, polar bears rarely had to swim what for them would be considered a “long” distance for, but now that it has begun to melt, they appear to have, how you say, “manned up.” According to a recent study, it is not infrequent for polar bears to now swim distances of 96 miles at one time, even up to a max of 220 miles at one time. Sometimes, polar bear cubs accompany their mothers on these swims, and if the cubs can’t keep up in the open water, they die. When it comes to “survival of the fittest,” polar bears don’t fuck around. If you can’t swim the 96-mile length of the gene pool, get out.
It remains to be seen just how far these creatures will swim to adapt to their changing environment. What’s certain, however, is that B-list horror filmakers will go to all possible lengths to exploit this trend; watch out for Polar Bears 3D, coming soon.
3) Polar bear liver is toxic.
Suppose that you do come up against one of these Arctic carnage machines, and manage to come out on top. Obviously, the next thing you’re going to want to do is make like Kirby and devour your opponent in order to subsume its power, right? Wrong. Even in death, the polar bear is still a killer.
Polar bears are adapted to a diet that includes an enormous amount of blubber, which is rich in Vitamin A. For this reason, the polar bear liver is adapted to process and store large amounts of vitamin A, which is fatal to humans in large doses. The Inuit have long known about the dangers of consuming polar bear liver, although the details surrounding the fate of their unlucky first taste-tester are unknown. If it was anything like the death of Arctic explorer Xavier Mertz, however, we can safely assume that it was absolutely fucking terrifying.
Mertz, along with companions Belgrave Ninnis and Douglas Mawson, were part of the Far Eastern Party Arctic expedition. (This is not to be confused with the mediocre American hip-hop group Far East Movement.) Things first began to take a turn for the worse when Ninnis fell down a hidden crevasse (you can bet that the polar bear would have spotted it, though) and took all of the supplies with him. Mawson and Mertz were soon forced to eat some of the sled dogs, which happened to be huskies. Mertz couldn’t handle the hard, stringy flesh, so took a more generous helping of the liver than did Mawson. Unfortunately for him, the husky, like the polar bear, has also evolved to process a high amount of blubber in its natural Arctic habitat, and consequently has a liver jam-packed with vitamin A. The account of both men’s subsequent illness and Mertz’s death sounds like something out of a bad acid trip: “Their hair fell out in large tufts, nails grew loose, toes blackened, skin peeled off. One day Mertz said to Mawson, ‘Just a moment, and, reaching over, lifted from his ear a perfect skin cast. I was able to do the same for him.’ Mertz grew lethargic, weak, depressed, chilled, and one day delirious. He died, presumably of hypervitaminosis A…”
Just to give some perspective, the liver of an Antarctic Husky, which contains about 10,000 IU of Vitamin A per gram, is about three times less toxic than the liver of a polar bear. The average polar bear liver contains between 24,000 and 35,000 IU of Vitamin A per gram. 10,000 IU of Vitamin A is the safe upper limit for human consumption, and signs of toxicity occur when between 25,000 to 30,000 IU are consumed. So one paltry gram of chopped polar liver is well over the “legal limit,” and is safely toxic. It is estimated that it would take about 30 to 90 g of polar bear liver to kill a person. 30 grams is about one ounce, which is about the weight of a pencil. It is unsurprising, therefore, that Arctic Hunters make sure to either throw the polar bear liver into the sea or bury it; if anyone were to come along and mistake it for something more benign, like rat poison or arsenic, it would spell instant death.
For obvious reasons, the polar bear will be awarded a medal for most epic “From the Grave” kill of the animal kingdom.
4) Polar bears are cannibals.
Polar bear males sometimes kill and eat young of their own species. “How is this surprising?” you smugly ask. “I’m smart. I read books. I know that cannibalism is fairly widespread in the animal kingdom.” Yes – you’re right. Lions (as well as chimpanzees, our closest relative) have been known to kill and eat the young of their own species. In both lions and chimpanzees, however, this behavior is thought to have at least partly a social function, as it appears to be used to assert dominance. There are even instances of human cannibalism, and not just back in the stone age. Infamous African warlord cannibals like General Butt-Naked believe that eating human flesh imbues them with special power; thus, human cannibalism might also thought to be linked to dominance type behaviors (or simply a mental disorder).
In polar bears, however, which are mostly solitary creatures, the purpose appears to be mostly related to hunger. Just as melting polar ice appears to necessitate polar bears making extremely long marathon swims, the shrinking size of the natural polar bear habitat and the resulting food scarcity is now forcing some to resort to cannibalism, providing further evidence for the fact that when it comes to the battle for survival, polar bears are willing to go to any length.
5) Polar bears grow really fast.
Polar bears are born blind and weighing 20 ounces, and are about the size of the Guinea pig. This is the part where every reader, even the guy who just got back from maxing out at 350 on the bench-press, secretly says in the privacy of their mind: “Ooooohhhhhhhh that’s adooooorable!” You probably think it would be cute to carry one around in your little pink purse like Reese Witherspoon’s dog in Legally Blonde, right?
Well, by this point in the list, you probably know better. Just in case you haven’t banished the warm and fuzzy thoughts yet, here are some fun facts. In eight months’ time, a polar bear will weigh about 100 pounds. This is definitely too big to fit in your purse. A full grown male polar bear can weigh more than 1, 400 pounds, and this is more than the world’s strongest man can deadlift. A female polar bear first breeds at the age of 5 or 6. Can you remember what you were doing when you were 5, beside wetting the bed and sitting around weighing under 50 pounds? If you were anything like the typical human baby, you were probably somewhere between 5 and 10 pounds at birth, only tripled in weight by the first birthday, and certainly weren’t producing any other puny, 5-10 pound polar bear snacks by your sixth birthday.
What does this all mean? It means that adopting a baby polar bear would be less like adopting a puppy and more like adopting one of Ridley Scott’s Aliens. No, it won’t burst from your chest at the dinner table, but that’s about where the dissimilarities end.
shut up! get your facts right before you put these things up! people might actually belive you! which all of what you wrote is WRONG! it is very RARE that polar bears attack humans! grizzley bears attack humans! they dont attack more then any other animal! and yes male polar bears do sometimes eat there won youn but because the ice break 3 weeks early there fat is nearly gone and if the cubs are away from there mother it is an easy target. AND polar bears are much smaller then they used to be since they have less food because of the global warming, so PLEASE dont make stuff up from you stuiped small minds, take this down please.
The article very clearly states polars bear stalking and attacking humans is a rare event: chill.
What did he write that was not true? Polar bear attack on human are rare but they will track kill and eat humans. End of story now take your meds and go to bed
Aria: Shut up! Get your grammar, spelling, and punctuation right before you put these things up!
Corrections: It’s Shut up! Get…, not shut up get. It’s BELIEVE, not belive. It’s GRIZZLY, not grizzley. It’s DON’T, not dont. It’s MORE THAN, not more then. It’s (semicolon space) ; AND YES, (comma), not “and yes male.” (or you can begin a sentence with conjunctions such as And, but you need to use the initial cap A as in And.
Unless you’re talking about Jang Won Young, Choi Won Young, or Jongwon Chon, there is no such proper name or phrase as “won youn,” in American, Korean, or Chinese slang. That said, you would (or you’d) need a comma after “youn,” a comma after “early,” it’s THEIR, not “there”, a semicolon after “gone;” and a comma after “mother,”. The number 3 should be spelled out in a sentence when using numbers one through ten, but now I’m really nitpicking.
In addition, if you insist in keyboarding these run-on sentences; you need a semicolon after “warming;”, a comma after “PLEASE,” spell DON’T correctly, add an r to you making the word “your”, spell STUPID correctly and place a period after “it.” Finally, use an initial cap T for Take and a comma after down, please (or use “Please take this down.”)
You see, Aria: It becomes very difficult to believe a person when their English grammar, spelling, and punctuation are so horrific. Please keep in mind that I wrote these comments in the spirit of fun because that was the author’s intention; and I LOL’d the entire way through it. The comments were also hilarious. And please keep in mind, I didn’t get an award for being the best English major in my state for nothing.
I love and respect polar bears for what they are. Our bedroom walls are covered with incredibly beautiful and funny photos of these majestic wild beasts.
With all that said, I concur with your statement about global warming and am fighting against it and loss of habitat every day. Best wishes to you, and keep fighting against global warming and loss of habitat.
What a pile of garbage,Heave writer Adam Cowden is a clown. Polar bear is a wild animal and does exactly what it is supposed to do, act like a wild and free creature. Stay the f*ck out of its way, leave it the f*ck alone, and everything is fine. Plant an oil rig or move into geography where humans don’t belong in the first place, and you create problems where none exist. Humans f*ck up everything they touch. Including this shitty dumb-ass article written by a clueless no-nothing.
In 1989, while on a solo Arctic trek sponsored by Mr Pibb, I spent one unforgettable night in the loving embrace of a mother polar bear and it was the most pure, calming, and soul-awakening sexual experience of my life. This momma bear was deep in heat and wet as a snowcone in all the important places and she held nothing back from my inquiring corpus. We dove to the very ocean trenches of physical sexmaking ‘neath the glowing borealis and when morning broke, I was alone on the ice, given company only by my memories and the coital warmth still throbbing under my snowsuit. So think before you speak, “Dinkum Olam” (I doubt that’s even your given name!) because I have my suspicions that YOU might be “clueless no-nothing” around here!!
This entire comment needs to be celebrated with some kind of internet reward.
Fernando I doubt very seriously such a thing as making love to a in heat female polar bear is possible but on the slight chance in some crazy way it is then I suggest you never ever speak of it again….something tells me you get your kicks on the net writing stuff like this 🙂
Disgusting. Didn’t finish reading it for obvious reasons. You need help.
*know
And, those of us who can actually comprehend what we read can tell that you didn’t comprehend the article.
You think you’re disputing the author’s points when he didn’t make the points you’re disputing.
Never trust a man named Dinkum sweetie..
Regardless, I would still bet money that this “clueless no-nothing” can at least spell “clueless know-nothing.” Lmao. Just saying…
The point of the article is polar bear facts, you snowflake. If you were face to face with a polar bear, these are the reasons you’d be shitting your pants- for the explicit reason that when it’s doing exactly what it’s supposed to be doing, it’s a terrifying prospect to encounter one. But I think you knew exactly what he meant in writing this article. If you didn’t, then you might just be the real know-nothing here.
[…] Grey Wolf(http://pintopony1.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoid=13053471)5. Polar Bear(http://www.heavemedia.com/2013/02/04/reasons-to-fear-the-polar-bear/)6. Red Panda(http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/red-panda/)7. […]
polar bears the only animals actively hunt for humans? pfffttt. what a crap. Some animals might develop a taste for humans, such as tigers in Sundarbans Bangladesh/India. But only in Sundarbans, in other places the tigers will in fact hide from humans. So you can’t say blatantly that there is a certain species that regularly hunts humans. That’s an utter bullshit
Reading comprehension fail.
Well if you say so then it must be bullshit right
[…] Photo credit here. […]
[…] has been having its coldest 6-month period since 1912. Polar bears, which are unique in that they actively hunt down humans, are flourishing. But there is one animal in peril because of the weather — the ducks of Lake […]
[…] When it gets big, a polar bear is the ONLY animal that actively HUNTS humans. […]
[…] eat them. Sharks don’t, wolves don’t, spiders don’t, polar bears do. They’re killers. Though that probably means they just need […]
I saw a film clip where a young polar bear attacked the zoo keeper as it had grown so quickly even though previously they had nursed it. So I believe the context of this article.
[…] Even if they’ve made the long transition from scourge to the cute mascot of anti-global warming efforts, maybe you should hunt polar bears because polar bears will hunt you. […]
I don’t think the writer is advocating that we kill polar bears. He said he’s just teaching us about polar bear behaviour. In the end, I still love polar bears and I don’t expect them to love me back.
I totally agree with nsalins, but this discussion is HILARIOUS.
ALL THE HATERS GO HUG A POLAR BEAR…..
hahahaaaa yeah baby that’ll shut them up
Well, if this guy got it wrong, so did the Wild life biologists at sea world in Orlando fl. I went on the polar bear tour. The thing i remember from the experience is them telling us that polar bears are the only animal that are known to actively hunt humans for food. I’m guessing if the owners of sea World had doubs about the validity of that statement, they would not have put it on the wall in paint. They don’t pay their experts to be wrong.
You tell him Kikki
Um… so what do you think caused polar ice to melt?
Decreasing global temperatures?
Pretty sure it was Fernando’s steaming love!
The author of this story has written a “hype” piece that only serves to scare people and makes polar bears seem like they are going to hang out on Main Street and pick off citizens! Any brown, black or polar bear would attack a human if it was starving, sick or injured–as would many creatures.
Polar bears are beautiful, majestic animals that deserve to live their lives in peace and do not go out of their way to attack humans. Simply stay out of their territory or, if you have to be there, make sure you have a guide with you that has the necessary experience and training to be there.
and we should believe you why? The other links to several other articles, within his article, but we should just trust your claims anonymous internet person?
Sharko, this “hype” piece did not scare me at all. I agree with your statement that, “Any brown, black or polar bear would attack a human if it was starving, sick or injured–as would many creatures.”
Note: I’m not going to attack your grammar as I did Aria’s because it’s not bad.
Bull Sharks hunt humans, they are the only animal that actually prefers humans