{"id":4942,"date":"2025-10-31T03:09:05","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T06:09:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/2025\/10\/31\/when-a-polar-bear-kills-it-doesnt-just-eat-it-feeds-a-whole-ecosystem\/"},"modified":"2025-10-31T03:09:05","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T06:09:05","slug":"when-a-polar-bear-kills-it-doesnt-just-eat-it-feeds-a-whole-ecosystem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/2025\/10\/31\/when-a-polar-bear-kills-it-doesnt-just-eat-it-feeds-a-whole-ecosystem\/","title":{"rendered":"When a polar bear kills, it doesnt just eat. It feeds a whole ecosystem"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>As It HappensMany of nature\u2019s apex predators guard their dinner from scavengers until they\u2019ve gobbled up every last morsel and licked the bones clean. But polar bars eat what they need, and leave the rest behind for other Arctic critters to munch. Study estimates polar bears leave behind 7.6 million kilograms of leftover meat a year for scavengersSheena Goodyear  \u00b7 CBC Radio  \u00b7 Posted: Oct 29, 2025 3:28 PM EDT | Last Updated: October 29Listen to this articleEstimated 4 minutesA new study shows that polar bears contribute to the Arctic ecosystem by providing food for other animals.  (Danny Gohlke\/DPA\/AFP\/Getty Images)LISTEN | Full interview with Holly Gamblin:As It Happens3:09When a polar bear kills, it feeds a whole ecosystemWhen a polar bear kills its prey, it\u2019s not the only one who gets to reap the bloody benefits.Many of nature\u2019s apex predators guard their dinner from scavengers until they\u2019ve gobbled up every last morsel and licked the bones clean. But scientists say polar bars tend to eat what they need, and leave the rest behind for other Arctic critters to munch.A new study, published the journal Oikos, estimates that one polar bear provides roughly 300 kilograms of meat per year for other animals to dine on. With 26,000 polar bears in the Arctic, that\u2019s a whopping 7.6 million kilograms of food annually.\u201cIf we lose polar bears from the Arctic \u2026 nothing can replace that,\u201d Holly Gamblin, wildlife biologist at University of Manitoba, told As It Happens host Nil K\u00f6ksal. \u201cThere\u2019s no other comparable species that is doing this.\u201dSharing is not necessarily caringBy sharing the spoils of the hunt, polar bears are providing what\u2019s known as an \u201cecosystem service,\u201d says Gamblin, the study\u2019s lead author. And it\u2019s in stark contrast to the behaviours of many other top predators, like mountain lions and wolves.But polar bears, she says, aren\u2019t doing this out of the kindness of their hearts.\u201cI can\u2019t say that they have this altruistic nature about them,\u201d she said. \u201cBut what they do have is this blubber specialist diet.\u201dPolar bears, she says, really only want to eat one thing \u2014 and that thing is blubber, the thick layer of warming fat under the skin of marine animals like seals and penguins.\u201cThey\u2019re usually stripping that first,\u201d Gamblin said. \u201cThey don\u2019t really care so much about the meat that\u2019s left over. It\u2019s hard for them to digest that protein.\u201dGeoff York, a polar bear researcher who wasn\u2019t involved in this study, says polar bears will go beyond the blubber if they\u2019re hungry enough, but they definitely prefer those fatty morsels.\u201cMuch like brown bears along salmon streams become more selective as they gain weight, eating only the eggs of spawning salmon and leaving the carcass, polar bears in good body condition also focus on the fat from marine mammal prey,\u201d York, director of research at the conservation group Polar Bear International, said in an email.Holly Gamblin, wildlife biologist at University of Manitoba, poses with an unconscious polar bear on Hudson Bay as part of a live-capture and release conservation monitoring program. (Submitted by Holly Gamblin)And one Arctic carnivore\u2019s trash is another\u2019s treasure.The study, which includes scientists from the University of Alberta, confirmed 11 vertebrate species have been documented scavenging polar bears\u2019 discarded meat, including wolves, foxes, gulls, hawks, snowy owls and grizzly bears.The team also identified another eight species as potential scavengers because they\u2019ve been spotted on the sea ice, but haven\u2019t been observed eating polar-bear cast-offs. Chief among the benefactors are Arctic foxes, who are known to follow polar bear tracks way out onto sea ice in the hope of snagging some meaty scraps. \u201cArctic foxes are kind of considered the best friend of polar bears,\u201d Gamblin said. \u201cSo polar bears making kills and fattening up can actually impact Arctic fox populations from year to year.\u201dArctic foxes are one of the creatures who benefit most from polar bears\u2019 leftovers.  (Maja Hitij\/Getty Images)But polar bear populations are declining rapidly.One study from last year estimates that polar bears could disappear entirely from Hudson Bay over the next couple of decades because of melting sea ice from climate change.Gamblin and her colleagues note that polar bear populations declined 32 per cent in the Western Hudson Bay between 1987 and 2011, and 44 per cent in the Southern Beaufort Sea between 2004 and 2016.Those losses alone amount to 323,000 kilograms in lost food resources for other Arctic animals, the study\u2019s authors say. That\u2019s just one more reason why it\u2019s important to protect polar bears, says York.\u201cThe potential loss of top predators is not about the loss of a single species, but the loss of a key player in the ecosystem that will have domino effects across the Arctic,\u201d he said.Interview with Holly Gamblin produced by Livia Dyring<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As It HappensMany of nature\u2019s apex predators guard their dinner from scavengers until they\u2019ve gobbled up every last morsel and licked the bones clean. But polar bars eat what they need, and leave the rest behind for other Arctic critters to munch. Study estimates polar bears leave behind 7.6 million kilograms of leftover meat a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4943,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[118,127,1],"tags":[116,126],"class_list":["post-4942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-indigenous","category-manitoba","category-uncategorized","tag-indigenous","tag-manitoba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4942\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}