Fatal Polar Bear Attack On August 8th 2024

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View pictures and Support us at Patreon • https://www.patreon.com/user?u=73787379 • Related Videos: • Connect with Addicus: • Find us on Twitter at ScaryBearAttax • Connect on TikTok with us at scarybearattacks • Connect on Instagram with us at ScaryBearAttack • Check out our Merch Store • https://scarybearattacks.myshopify.com/ • On August 8th, 2024, a worker at the Brevoort Island Radar Station was performing usual duties at the site. The victims name has not been released to protect their privacy so we will refer to him as Mike. • The managing corporation, Nassituq corporation, has safety guidelines in place centered around avoiding polar bear confrontations. Employees at the site rarely go anywhere on foot and are trained to quickly access vehicles when transporting between buildings or sites. • Even with known and reliable safety measures in place, Mike was somehow attacked by two polar bears at once while outside of the facility. After he was ambushed fellow workers ran to retrieve firearms, but arrived too late to save Mike’s life. One of the polar bears was killed and the other fled from the site. • Upon initial investigation of the incident, observers considered the possibility that the two bears were litter mates. They may have formed their own sleuth after being kicked out by their mother, and were now learning how to make it on their own. The attack on Mike was clearly a predatory attack, as nearly all polar bear attacks are, but the controversy that is swirling is what drove them to the radar site in search of food in the first place? • A little bit of information about polar bear life cycles is needed to understand why this attack happened at this time of year. Polar bears do not hibernate or enter torpor in winter, like brown and black bears do. Instead they enter a mild form of torpor in the summer, which is likely heat induced. The sea ice upon which they hunt has retreated seasonally limiting their ability to hunt so they lay around waiting for winter. Depending on how successful of a winter hunting season they had and the fat stores it allowed them to put away, summer season is slow time for polar bears. • That brings us back to the attack at the radar site and Mike. The two polar bears should have been waiting for winter, but for some reason, they were active and looking for food. I reviewed over 60 articles while researching this episode and to my frustration, they were almost all identical, but somehow had different author names for their attribution. Most of them concluded that climate change was driving polar bear attacks, including the ones featured on our prior episodes, indicating that a reduced ice pack limited polar bear hunting causing their starvation and predation upon people. • While researching how climate change and a loss of sea ice influences polar bear attacks I stumbled upon an article from Phys.org, a website dedicated to providing scientific, technological and medical news. In this article the viability of the northwest passage being a trade route was discussed. It was reported that thick sea ice flow from 2007 to 2021 limited Arctic shipping lanes to only a few weeks of access each season. • This report seems to contradict the loss of sea ice due to climate change theory and the conflicting scientific claims leave many confused. • In a broad study of polar bear attacks reported between 1870 and 2014, 73 confirmed attacks occurred on U.S., Canadian, Russian, Norwegian and Danish territories. 20 human deaths resulted from these attacks. • Canada hosts an estimated 17,000 polar bears and the global population stands at about 26,000. Female polar bears have a three month gestation period which runs through early winter. Her cubs are born blind and toothless, requiring her to devote all of her attention and energy to them until they can venture out onto the ice with her. • Speaking of cubs, our cub tier membership on Patreon, linked below will give you ad-free early access to our episodes and the $3 per month goes a long way in helping me continue to produce educational and entertaining content like this. • While brainstorming for solutions which may be used to prevent polar bear attacks, I came up with a possibility. If the arctic governments killed whales and placed their carcasses far away from human civilizations during times of stress on the bears, would this help stabilize attack frequencies and aid polar bear survival. Would this intervention in natural processes negatively affect polar bear populations more than help? If evolution has honed polar bears for arctic survival should we interfere with its course, even if it means they go extinct? I will gladly read and reply to your thoughts, so please post them in the comments section below and let’s talk about it!

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