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Yours truly
Polar Bear — Close Up
This visitor to the tundra train is standing up and leaning casually against the car so I can get a close-up portrait. A handsome and winsome fellow, he looks like he would be as friendly as Winnie-the-Poo. NOT! The world's largest land carnivore, these animals have no natural predators except man and can be killed by nothing except man and walruses. Full-grown males weigh 800–1200 pounds (slightly larger than grizzlies), females about three-quarters of that or less.
Polar bears have very unusual metabolic adaptations. They can fast for long periods, but are capable of consuming 200 pounds of meat in a single feeding at a whale carcass. After the sea and Hudson Bay ice melts north of Churchill (June-July), most bears come ashore and consume very little food until the following fall when the Bay freezes over again (October-November). Thus they store enough fat during the winter seal hunting season to tide them over the months from July to November — just the opposite of hibernating animals. Bears do not hibernate.