Most polar bears that attack are starving, study shows
Jim Wilder was a young researcher on the frozen Beaufort Sea when he had his first polar bear encounter.
“We were camped out on the sea ice in front of a maternal den waiting for (mama bear) to come out with her cubs,” he recalls. “A polar bear came up and sniffed the tent, right where my head was, when I was sleeping in the middle of the night, and went on its merry way.”
Wilder, a scientist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, is a co-author of a study analyzing all recorded cases of polar bear attacks on humans in the five countries where they live. He said his story shows why the idea of the Arctic hunters as enthusiastic predators of humans is a myth.
“They’re portrayed as these extremely dangerous man-eating beasts that are looking to attack people, which I think is fairly inaccurate.”
Although he acknowledges his list is incomplete and doesn’t include data from Indigenous people from the Arctic, Wilder’s team found only 73 recorded predatory attacks in the144 years between 1870 and 2014.
The study, published in the Wildlife Society Bulletin, says nearly twothirds of the attacks were by young adult bears starting to starve. Almost all the attacks were by males, usually young. Of the 11 that weren’t, most were females defending cubs.
Polar bears, Wilder said, avoid risk. Unlike black or grizzly bears, which can eat plants if necessary, polar bears must hunt.
“If they get injured, that impairs their ability to hunt,” he said. “There isn’t a lot of incentive for them to be aggressive — unless times are bad.”
The findings suggest that human-bear conflicts are going to worsen as climate change whittles away at the sea ice, where the bears hunt. The report found that nearly nine in 10 attacks occurred in the months when the sea ice was at its lowest.