The Patriot Post® · Wait, Polar Bears Can Dive?

Scientists are excited to share some breaking news. Polar bears aren’t just good swimmers, they’re good divers too. CBS News has the scoop: “Scientists recently observed a polar bear dive that lasted 3 minutes, 10 seconds, shattering the previous known record by about 2 minutes. … Polar bears are known to dive for food … [and] typically stay submerged for anywhere between 3 and 30 seconds when diving. Sometimes, they’ll stay submerged longer to look for kelp, but the longest recorded kelp dive lasted only about 1 minute, 12 seconds.” You’re probably thinking, “So what! Tell me more about the dead lion in Africa!” But you’ll never guess what brought about this polar bear adaptation. Well, ok, you probably will. Global warming is melting all the ice. CBS says, “[I]t could be a sign that these animals are evolving to survive in a habitat that is rapidly changing. Global warming is leading to a dearth of sea ice, the researchers said, meaning polar bears have less ice on which to hunt. As such, the animals must spend more time in the water than they did previously.” But it was just a year ago that some scientists worried about too much ice preventing polar bears from hunting. And as of last September, the Arctic ice cap had expanded substantially. So maybe polar bears have been good at diving all along.