Do you both love penguins and polar bears and have ever asked yourself why your two favourite animals can’t be friends? In this article, I will explain why they never have and never will live in the same place!
Polar bears
The word Arctic comes from the Greek word for ‘bear’ which is ‘arkoúda’. Polar bears can only be found in the Arctic, they don’t exist in the Antarctic. This area includes parts of Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Norway, Russia and sometimes Iceland. Polar bears mostly live off of seals which are high in calories and keep them well-fed for a long time and well-insulated. Besides seals, polar bears are also known to eat walruses, belugas, narwhales or reindeer. The male bears can get as heavy as up to 815kg! Since climate change is depriving polar bears of their habitat, they are slowly expanding their hunting areas further south. This leads to increased pairing with grizzly bears and leads to the, in 2006 confirmed breed, pizzly bear or grolar bear.
Penguins
On the contrary to polar bears, penguins live in Antarctica. That polar bears don’t live together with them, can even be seen in the name. Antarctica literally means ‘no bear’ in Greek. In general, there are 17 different species of penguins but only four of them can be found in Antarctica. One of these four, the emperor penguin, is the largest and measures up to 115 centimetres. During hatching time, the male penguins stand for up to 65 days in one spot to warm their eggs from up to -60°C around them.
Why can they not meet?
Now that we know that polar bears and penguins don’t live on the same continent and even on opposite sides of the earth it is obvious why they can’t meet. But let’s look deeper into it anyway why they physically can’t travel to each other. The two poles are the only places that are fully covered in ice and they are not connected. Since polar bears get to warm at only 10°C, they would never be able to survive the journey through the climate zones. Polar bears also mostly walk on the ice and rarely leave the steady ground for the water. The closest landmass to Antarctica is the southern part of South America and to reach Antarctica from there they would have to cross the Drake Passage which is often ruled by powerful storms.
Why don’t they live on the opposite side?
Antarctica has cold temperatures, sea ice and seals just like the Arctic, which would technically be the perfect habitat for polar bears. So why don’t they exist in Antarctica? So say it easily, it just didn’t happen. There is no clear answer to this question and it was basically a coincidence. Long before any of us existed, the earth only had one continent called Pangea. Animals were able to move around freely but when the landmass broke apart 200 million years ago, it became a thing of the past. By chance, the ancestors of today’s polar bears were stuck in the parts that are now Europe, North America and Asia. 1.4 million years later the brown bear evolved from these ancestors and another million years later the albino version started wandering through the Arctic. Since the continents were in almost the same position as they are today, polar bears never had the chance to make a trip to Antarctica. In general, bears are more of a northern hemisphere phenomenon and are not known in the southern parts of the Earth. The same thing happened with the penguins and it was just never meant to be for them to meet.
Climate change and the chance to save polar bears
As we all know, climate change is slowly but steadily stealing the natural habitat of polar bears and making it harder for them to hunt for food. This causes numerous polar bears to starve and leaves them on the brink of extinction. There are many ideas to possibly save these beloved animals and one of them is to ‘simply’ relocate them from the Arctic to Antarctica since the ice there is melting at a slower rate. Let’s look into why this would realistically not make sense. First of all, Antarctica does not have any land predators like polar bears. This means that penguins and seals are relatively safe from being eaten when on land which means they didn’t evolve to be fast walkers. If polar bears would be introduced there, penguins wouldn’t stand a chance and would probably be fully replaced by polar bears. Next to losing penguins, there are also other problems that would hinder the relocation. Antarctica is not under the control of one country, but of fifty-four, which makes it very hard to pass any plan, let alone a crazy one like this. It’s also logistically very difficult to move polar bears from one side of the earth to the other while maintaining the temperature so they do not die on the way. Moving an entire species across the globe is definitely not the solution, especially because Antarctica will melt over time too. The only thing we can do to save the polar bears is to actively reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, as quickly as we can.
As you can see there really isn’t any chance for polar bears and penguins to ever be friends. At least not in this lifetime and not in the wild. But maybe it’s not such a bad thing, it makes the South and the North Pole special in their very own way and gives you an excuse to visit both of them! But if you ever get the chance to see a polar bear, don’t forget: as soft and cuddly as they may look, they are wild animals and better to watch from afar.
Sources:
https://www.polarbear-world.com/polar-bears-and-global-warming/
https://www.explore.co.uk/blog/11-facts-about-penguins-and-polar-bears
https://cimi.org/blog/polar-bears-penguins-are-polar-opposites/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/allenelizabeth/2021/01/03/no-polar-bears-do-not-live-in-antarctica-but-could-they/?sh=32390a465d4d
https://www.infobae.com/en/2022/04/02/why-are-there-no-polar-bears-in-antarctica/