Bears on the move? It’s paw-sible!
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
Polar bears live in the FREEZING arctic. And brown bears prefer warmer forests. But sometimes they overlap, and have cubs together! What the—?
Tianying Lan from the University of Buffalo and team investigated.
They looked at D-N-A similarities between polar and brown bears in the places they live. They compared the genetic information from SIXTY-FIVE bears, modern and ancient. When they interbreed, polar bear D-N-A will go into brown bear populations. And vice versa! Researchers compared how much D-N-A had been swapped, using the ancient bear as a guide.
Results?
Before, researchers thought that ONLY polar bears would seek out brown bears. Instead, they found that mostly, brown bears went north, mixing with polar bears.
Researchers think interbreeding may help polar bears during climate change. Brown bears better tolerate higher temperatures. However, this may not be enough to counteract habitat loss from melting sea ice.
Hopefully, interbreeding can help them… grin and BEAR it!
Reference: Lan, T., K. Leppälä, C. Tomlin, S. L. Talbot, G. K. Sage, S. D. Farley, R. T. Shideler, L. Bachmann, Ø. Wiig, V. A. Albert, J. Salojärvi, T. Mailund, D. I. Drautz-Moses, S. C. Schuster, L. Herrera-Estrella, and C. Lindqvist. 2022. Insights into bear evolution from a Pleistocene polar bear genome. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 119:e2200016119.