Animals Beauty

«The king of the polar countries», a polar bear (Ursus maritimus), belongs to number of the mightiest predators on the earth. This largest predator of a planet (its weight sometimes reaches tons) spends all life in movement. Not casually Eskimos name a polar bear «pihokiak» that means “eternally wandering”. The polar bear has adapted to dwelling in ice desert of Arctic ocean, to a life at strong frosts and gale-force winds, to darkness of polar night. The polar bear does not run into hibernation, as its relative – a brown bear. But the polar bear can lie down in a den not only in the winter, but also in the summer. So he has difficult, hungry time. Seals – its basic forage. Seals are extended in Arctic regions very non-uniformly, these animals spend time most part under ice. There seals are inaccessible to a predator. Therefore and days of successful hunting of the king of Arctic regions sometimes are replaced by weeks of the compelled starvation.

The polar bear conducts a semi water way of life. It differs from all other bears of globe. The structure of a body of a polar bear is adapted for such way of life: narrow a streamline a trunk, wide paws – of “oar”, a narrow head with the straightened profile, the raised eye-sockets and highly located eyes, the extended mobile neck. All it does a polar bear by the good swimmer and the diver. Seafarers, travelling on northern seas, often met polar bears who floated in the high sea on distance of hundred miles from the nearest land or ice floes. Under water of an eye at a bear are opened, and nostrils and auricles are compressed.

It is known that the sizes of Arctic regions are rather small. Therefore the dwelling area on globe of a polar bear also is insignificant. Actually the native land of animals also is at all small. These are separate islets – mountainous, poorly mastered by the man and located on ways of usual bear migrations. In the autumn on these islets she-bears gather. Here they lie down in dens, in the middle of winter give birth to bear cubs, and are started up with bear cubs in habitual travel in the spring.

Such places where the majority of polar bears were born are in the east of Spitsbergen, on the Franz-Josef Land, in some areas of the north of Canada and Greenland. The majority of females lie down in dens in September – October. In December – January the she-bear gives birth in a refuge of one-two bear cubs. Bear cubs blind, deaf, naked, weight only in 400-450 grammes. In a den the temperature seldom falls to zero though outside there can be a frost in 20-30 degrees.

To three-monthly age bear kids become covered by dense fur. Bear cubs become mobile, brisk, and capable to travel together with mother on ices. The she-bear cares of bear cubs two years, and sometimes and longer. Thus the she-bear of more years feeds kids with milk. To breed these animals begin not earlier, than in four – five years’ age.

In the middle of 1950 on a planet remain only about ten thousand polar bears. This animal has been included in the International Red Data Book and was registered as a rare species. In 1975 some countries have entered into the international agreement on an absolute prohibition of hunting for a polar bear. The result was not slow to affect: now on open spaces of Arctic regions wanders not less than 30 thousand these big, strong animals.