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Arctic Wildlife

The Arctic is home to a surprisingly wide range of animals, each ingeniously adapted to life in this hostile landscape. Some bugs and beasties can even tolerate being frozen solid, and the short summer brings out a wide variety of insects including mosquitoes.

POLAR BEAR

Found only in the Arctic, the majestic polar bear has become a symbol of the region – and of the effects of climate change. The endangered animal is an excellent swimmer, its relatively small head helping streamline it through the water.

Polar bears eat mainly seals and other marine mammals, and their hunting ground is at the edge of the frozen sea, or on smaller ice floes. While they sometimes stalk their prey on the sea ice, the cunning creatures will often wait patiently for a seal to pop its head up through an air hole in the ice, springing into action to drag it out of the water with its powerful paws.

Humans are their only predator, with hunting for sport and skins reducing numbers dramatically in the last century. Scientists estimate only around twenty-five thousand remain, and while hunting is now strictly controlled, the endangered bears face a new and critical threat from global warming. With the sea ice shrinking and melting earlier each year, polar bears are finding it ever harder to catch enough food to survive.

With two layers of fur and a thick layer of blubber the polar bear is adapted perfectly to the frozen Arctic, losing almost no heat from its body.

ARCTIC FOX

This beautiful creature has the warmest fur of any mammal, and is the only fox to change colour with the seasons, making it extremely hard to spot. In winter its fur is almost pure white, turning brown in summer (another variety has a blue-grey coat in winter). Its short ears and legs also help minimise heat loss. The Arctic fox stays active all winter, feeding off small rodents like lemmings and voles. If they’re not available it will dig up food buried in more plentiful times, and will also scavenge leftovers from bear kills.

The ‘snow white’ fur of the Arctic fox provides excellent camouflage.

CARIBOU

Caribou are the wild relative of the domesticated reindeer and have adapted to the extreme conditions by making extremely hardy plants, called lichens, the main part of their diet. These plants form a thin covering over rocks, and caribou will dig through the snow with their hooves to find them. They may migrate hundreds of miles, heading to the more southerly parts of the Arctic in winter in search of food.

MUSK OX

The huge musk ox has two coats to keep it warm, an underlayer of fine wool and a much longer, shaggy outer coat. The inner wool coat is far softer and warmer than wool and is often used by local people to weave scarves. Like caribou, musk oxen use their hooves to clear snow so they can graze on lichens and mosses.

BIRDS

Many birds visit the Arctic in summer, from snow geese to the amazing Arctic tern, the greatest traveller in the animal kingdom. This relatively small bird is only around 30cm (12in) long, but travels around 40,000km (25,000 miles) each year, migrating from the Arctic to the Antarctic and back again. In this way it spends summer in each polar region, experiencing almost constant daylight.

SEA MAMMALS

The icy Arctic waters are home to many species of seal, including the polar bear’s favourite, the ringed seal. All sea mammals need to surface to breathe, and the ringed seal is able to live under vast areas of frozen ocean by using its sharp claws to cut breathing holes in the ice, which may be several metres thick. This is occasionally its undoing, as it may pop its head up only to find a hungry polar bear lying in wait.

Several types of whale are found only in Arctic waters, including the huge bowhead, named after its bowed lower jaw, and the legendary narwhal. Male narwhals have an extraordinary spiral tusk up to 3m (10ft) long, prompting comparisons with the mythical unicorn. The tusk, an extended ivory tooth, is not used for hunting, and its true function remains something of a mystery.

HOW DO YOU fight off a polar bear?

With great difficulty, truth to tell, so the real answer is never to get into the situation in the first place. Polar bears are the world’s largest land carnivores. There are many horrific tales of how they’ve stalked and attacked humans, unlike, for example, grizzly and black bears, which don’t see humans as prey, tending to attack only when surprised or threatened. Despite the horror stories, polar bears also generally avoid people unless they are starving, and fatalities are rare.

An adult male is immensely strong and typically weighs around 350kg (800lb), four times the average adult human. It is essential to have with you an armed local guide who should help you avoid encounters in the first place.

Common sense rules include never approaching a bear for any reason, and avoiding the kill site of a seal or other animal. Choose a campsite well away from bear ‘highways’ and den sites, and pitch your tents wide apart in a line so that a bear wandering into your camp won’t feel surrounded and threatened. Husky teams with a track record of scaring away polar bears are always a good deterrent.

If a bear does show signs of stalking and hunting you, there are no guaranteed strategies for scaring it away. It’s important to stay together as a group and stand your ground. It may help to make lots of noise by banging pots and pans together and throwing things like firecrackers, but if the animal is very hungry and determined you will have to rely on your armed guide. Sadly, if all else fails, it may ultimately be a case of kill or be killed.

CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE ARCTIC

It is now an accepted fact that the Earth has been warming up in recent years. While there may still be some dispute over how much of the climate change is down to human activity and how much is part of a natural cycle, it is clear that global warming is already having a dramatic effect on the Arctic.

Local studies such as the glacier survey carried out in part by the Serious Arctic team suggest the Arctic is heating up at almost twice the average global rate. The area of frozen sea is shrinking, the spring ice thaw is happening earlier and the autumn freeze later each year. If the temperature continues to rise as scientists predict, there could be devastating consequences for both wildlife and local people.

Taking an ice core sample from the Grinnell Glacier.

An aerial view of spectacular ice formations where the frozen sea meets the open ocean.

Serious Survival: How to Poo in the Arctic and Other essential tips for explorers

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