According to media reports, a new discovery about a new subspecies of the polar bear has excited researchers. The researchers found that these special polar bears, breaking through themselves, have mastered new skills and can prey such as seals in the presence of freshwater ice, which brings new hope for polar bears to adapt to the survival of the new environment.
Why are polar bears called animals of the 19th century?
After tens of thousands of years of evolution, human beings have finally developed today's science and technology. In human life, there are often some animals that have extremely close contact with humans. For example, pigs, cats, dogs, these are all good companions of human beings, which have been discovered by humans a long time ago and have been successfully tamed.
However, as a large animal, the polar bear may have been the one that humans discovered last night. Around the 19th of the 19th century, an explorer in a fjord southeast of Greenland spotted a white-haired animal living in the Arctic and eventually named it a polar bear.
It can be said that the polar bear is almost the last large animal that humans have found on Earth. Because the areas where they live and operate are relatively special, high latitudes that humans usually cannot reach, and lack of human intervention for their survival, these polar bears have been in a carefree state for a long time.
However, in the past 400 years, with the continuous progress of science and technology, human beings have destroyed nature as never before. With the excess emission of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse effect is becoming more and more obvious, resulting in a warming global climate.
In recent decades, researchers have found that glaciers in both the Antarctic and Arctic are beginning to melt, and there is a trend of slow sea levels rising. As arctic and antarctic glaciers gradually melt, people begin to worry about whether the penguins and polar bears living in the arctic and antarctic will be reduced in number or even extinct due to the warming climate.
These polar bears learn new skills, will their numbers increase?
Compared with penguins, the one that worries researchers the most is the polar bear. The number of polar bears is not correct, coupled with the large size of polar bears, a large amount of food is needed to feed every day to maintain life.
However, as glaciers melt, the area of sea ice is shrinking. You know, every time a polar bear catches food, it floats its body on the sea ice and preys on fish, seals and other creatures in the sea. But now that sea ice is dwindling, researchers are particularly concerned about whether it will leave polar bears with nowhere to feed.
To that end, the researchers came to Greenland and conducted extremely detailed expeditions to the polar bears here. The researchers found that in the southeast of the island, a long-standing group of polar bears in a canyon area made it difficult for polar bears to have more contact with the outside world due to the steep glaciers.
When the researchers genetically calculated the polar bears in these canyons, they found that the polar bears living in the canyons had different genetic characteristics from other polar bears, and named this group of genetically special polar bears as a new species of polar bears.
For 7 years, researchers have conducted satellite tracking, personnel investigations and other aspects of the new subspecies of polar bears, and obtained a new discovery.
The researchers unexpectedly found that these new subspecies of polar bears began to learn to use freshwater ice to catch food in the face of a warming Earth and a shrinking area of sea ice. This skill gives researchers new hope, and if more polar bears can learn this trick, it will provide a broader space for the polar bear's living environment and predatory environment.
At the same time, the researchers also realized that the special living environment of these new polar bear subspecies, in the area where they live, about 250 days a year can not see sea ice, so in order to survive, in order to be able to prey on more food, these new species of polar bears have learned to use light ice to prey on the skill.
What other animals on Earth have learned new skills for better survival?
In fact, with the continuous expansion of the scope of human activities, the living environment of almost all animals on the earth today is more or less affected by humans. So, in order to better live on the earth, what skills have these animals re-unlocked beyond themselves?
It can be said that the fastest learning and imitation of the animal kingdom is the monkey. Under the guidance of humans, monkeys not only learned to peel bananas, learned to eat ice cream, and even learned to ride bicycles.
What surprised the researchers most was that some monkeys learned practical tools. Researchers at the scene saw that some monkeys picked up stones and were smashing walnuts on the ground little by little, and after the walnuts were smashed, the monkeys put down the stones in their hands and put these walnut hearts into their mouths.
Seeing the clever actions of this group of monkeys, some people even have a sense of crisis, saying that now that monkeys have learned to use tools, will they compete with humans for territory in a few years?
What do you think about the new subspecies of polar bears unlocking new skills? Feel free to leave a message in the comments section.