ANCHORAGE, Alaska: Some polar bears in the Arctic are shedding pounds during the time they should be beefing up, a new study shows. It’s the climate change diet and scientists say it’s not good.
They blame global warming for the dwindling ice cover on the Arctic Ocean that bears need for hunting seals each spring.
For their research, the scientists spied on the polar bears by equipping nine female white giants with tracking collars that had video cameras and the bear equivalent of a Fitbit during three recent springs. The bears also had their blood monitored and were weighed.
What the scientists found is that five of the bears lost weight and four of them lost 2.9 to 5.5 pounds (1.3 to 2.5 kilograms) per day. The average polar bear studied weighed about 386 pounds (175 kilograms). One bear lost 51 pounds (23 kilograms) in just nine days.
“You’re talking a pretty amazing amount of mass to lose,” said US Geological Survey wildlife biologist Anthony Pagano, lead author of a new study in Thursday’s journal Science .
Researchers studied the bears for 10 days in April, when they are supposed to begin putting on weight so they can later have cubs, feed the cubs and survive through the harsh winter. But because the ice is shrinking, the bears are having a harder time catching seal pups even during prime hunting time, Pagano said. The United States Fish and Wildlife Service lists polar bears as a threatened species.
Polar bears hunt from the ice. They often wait for seals to pop out of holes to get air and at other times they swim after seals. If there is less sea ice and it is broken apart, bears have to travel more — often swimming — and that has serious consequences, such as more energy use, hypothermia and risk of death, said University of Alberta biology professor Andrew Derocher, who wasn’t part of the study.
The study found that on the ice, the polar bears burn up 60 percent more energy than previously thought, based on these first real-life measurements done on the ice. A few of the bears traveled more than 155 miles (250 kilometers) in about 10 days off the northern coast of Alaska in the Beaufort Sea, Pagano said. The average bear female burned about 13,200 calories a day — six times more than an active human female.
“Just to break even they have to capture at least one seal every five to 10 days — and that’s just to break even,” said study co-author George Durner, a USGS research zoologist. “And if they don’t do that they’re going to lose weight.”
The ice cover in the Arctic grows in the winter and melts in the summer. Because of climate change, the ice is shrinking and thinning more and earlier, he said.
As the ice dwindles, “we are essentially pulling the rug out from underneath the polar bears,” Durner said.
The bear videos showed researchers all sorts of usually private aspects of polar bear life, including courtship and hunting. They recorded dramatic, and at times, bloody seal hunts from the bear’s perspective.
“You’re seeing everything it is seeing,” Durner said.
Researchers only tracked female bears because males can’t keep collars on — their heads are too small and their necks too big — Pagano said.
Blaine Griffen, a Brigham Young University biology professor who wasn’t part of the study, praised the USGS work, noting that past studies have looked at resting polar bears and polar bears on treadmills in the lab.
In the long run, climate change “will result in smaller bears that produce fewer cubs and that have lower survival rates,” Griffen said in an email.
All over the Arctic, scientists have seen evidence of weakened polar bears, Pagano said. Last month, a video of a starving polar bear went viral, but it is from a different part of the Arctic and unlikely to be related to global warming, Durner said.
“If it’s bad for polar bears, it might be affecting us in other ways — us being humans,” Durner said. “It’s part of a larger picture.”
Climate change diet: Arctic sea ice thins, so do polar bears
Climate change diet: Arctic sea ice thins, so do polar bears
Filipinos celebrate Christmas on a budget amid soaring costs
- Filipinos are choosing modest Christmas gifts, scaling down year-end festivities
- Millions look to content creators for tips on how to spend less for Christmas dinner
MANILA: As the predominantly Catholic Philippines celebrates one of its most important annual holidays on Thursday, many Filipinos have been forced to rethink their traditional Christmas celebrations amid soaring prices.
This year, street food vendor Gemma Gracia is among those who will keep her business open during the holidays.
“As a vendor, I’ve felt the prices go up since I also still buy at the market for our needs and for our selling needs,” she told Arab News.
But as celebrating Christmas was important for her family, the 39-year-old has allocated 1,000 Philippine pesos ($17) for a family meal out at Jollibee, the Philippines’ biggest fast-food chain restaurant.
“When you don’t have food to share on the table on this holiday, it’s a sad day. That’s why we make sure that we always have something on the table each year,” she said.
For many Filipinos, the time-honored traditions of Noche Buena, or Christmas Eve, is the most awaited part of this holiday season, when dinner tables across the country are filled with a hearty selection of traditional dishes.
Noche Buena, which is Spanish for “the good night,” is the dinner that follows the last evening mass of the season, known as misa de gallo or simbang gabi.
In the Philippines, such festive staples include meaty Filipino-style spaghetti and hamonado, the local version of a Christmas ham that usually serves as the centerpiece of Christmas dinner tables.
But the pinch from rising prices has affected Filipino shoppers in recent years, forcing them to adjust according to their budget.
Although the country’s central bank said inflation had eased to 1.5 percent in November, many say the statistics do not reflect on-the-ground realities, where people reel from rising retail prices, shrinking portions and diminishing purchasing power of the peso.
Allan Manansala, a 48-year-old construction worker in Manila, told Arab News that he is expecting to spend 5,000 pesos for his family of five in 2025, nearly a third of his monthly wage and about a fifth higher than what he spent in previous years.
“I might have to skip giving my children gifts this year because of the costs,” he said.
To get around the high costs, Manansala is skipping the Noche Buena festivities altogether and has instead decided to splurge on New Year’s Eve dinner, which is also a significant occasion in the Philippines.
Others, like Allan Melenio, look for different ways to save up.
“Our relative owns a meat shop, so we’re able to save on that since the prices are quite low,” he told Arab News. “But everywhere else, a piece of meat can cost so much.”
While the economy has forced Filipinos to make smarter choices and get creative, content creators are among those offering ideas to address consumers’ woes, teaching people how to stretch their meager budgets for the holidays.
One such tip came from Ninong Ry, a food content creator who challenged himself to prepare an eight-dish Noche Buena dinner with a budget of 1,500 pesos. Posted about two weeks before Christmas, his one-hour YouTube video has since garnered more than 1.4 million views.
The video was also a response to comments from Philippine Trade Secretary Cristina Aldeguer-Roque, who suggested last month that 500 pesos was enough for a family of four to host a modest Christmas Eve dinner, sparking anger among Filipinos who said she was out of touch with reality.
Jelmark Toqueb, who works as a plumber in Manila, said that the 500-peso budget was unrealistic.
“It is clearly not enough. (Five hundred pesos) is not even enough for you to cook spaghetti with meat. Maybe just the noodles and the sauce,” he told Arab News.
For 32-year-old Toqueb and his wife, who works as a public school teacher, the holiday season remains a cherished occasion to spend quality time with the family. As their Christmas tradition involves gift-giving, he chose more modest presents this year to circumvent the high costs.
“The prices now are different even from last year, (when they were) already high,” Toqueb said. “Even if the gift is simple, it’s fine. It’s the thought that counts.”
