Police have shot and killed a polar bear that came ashore in northwestern Iceland, the first sighting of a polar bear there since 2016. It might have hitched a ride from Greenland on a floating iceberg.
Well, now I’m sad.
humans do not deserve animals
I mean in this case people don’t deserve to be killed by animals, even if they’re cute animals
yes they do
Edgy
about as much as a marshmallow. smooth and round like a circle. fits into just about anywhere.
Here in the states, we shot a gorilla once.
It, uh, . . . It didn’t go very well for a long time after that.
Personally I’d recommend some other approach. But that’s just me.
I think there’s a slight difference in a captive gorilla and wild polar bear.
I mean (unrelated but still) I think a polar bear could 1v1 a gorilla. Meaning I think a polar bear is more dangerous. Especially a hungry one, that’s able to just walk into a population center.
I too wish they could’ve saved the bear, but I don’t think people are gonna complain about this as much as with Harambe (RIP)
Like even if anaesthesia was an option, they’d still have had to give it a ride back, or build it a home. And building zoos just isn’t too popular nowadays imo.
Polar bears are three times the size and weight of a silverback. They could likely prevail in a 1v2 or 1v3. 1v4 would be a fair fight.
I mean, 1v1 is easy, 1v2 maybe even, but if there’s a group of silverbacks, what with being somewhat smart and sturdy themselves, I think they could occasionally even get a win.
I’ve never seen a gorilla irl, but I’ve seen a taxidermied polar bear, and holy fuck those things are big. But then I think of just how versatile opposable thumbs are and of how insanely thick gorilla muscles are.
I’m marking this as a thing I’d like to know but probably never will, what with the moral implications of setting animals on each other in blood sports.
Gorillas don’t have much for protection. The bear has 4" of fat “armor”. The gorillas won’t be able to bite or tear flesh.
My thinking is that if the bear is able to grab one of the gorillas, it will be disabled pretty much instantly. Unless the remaining gorilla(s) can press their momentary advantage while the bear is distracted, it’s just going to rip them apart one by one.
1v4, they might have enough clout to keep the bear immobilized long enough to kill it.
Gorillas don’t have much for protection. The bear has 4" of fat “armor”. The gorillas won’t be able to bite or tear flesh.
Oh yeah this is very true. But like several of them manhandling one, idk. Might be out of their capacity for coordination, though.
Yeah, with adequate coordination, the gorillas should prevail in a 1v3. But I think they tend to fight more like individuals than as a pack.
I’m just saying that the romans stopped putting bears into fights in the colloseum because it got boring - the bears qust wrecked everything else the romans could get their hands on.
Or so I’ve heard, I’m not a historian.
I believe this.
And they didn’t even have polar bears afaik.
Romans should’ve put Silverfang in the ring.
A bear would get obliterated by an elephant, maybe even a hippo. And the Romans could get their hands on those.
I think a polar bear could 1v1 a gorilla. Meaning I think a polar bear is more dangerous.
An inuit friend once told me a polar bear could hunt, stalk, kill and eat you in about 8 minutes. I’m told the conversion from Minutes to Treadwells says it’s longer, but I didn’t check whether he was putting me on.
a hungry one, that’s able to just walk into a population center
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/13/churchill-canada-polar-bear-capital
It takes a lot of training and a little acceptance. Note, in the article above, the term ‘medical bills’, which in Canada doesn’t mean “cash for care” so much as “rent and food during recovery”, which aren’t covered by insurance.
What does? Living in a polar bear habitat? Did you actually read the article yourself, or did you — I presume — just Google something you thought supported your view?
“If you were to build a town today, you would never put it here,”
Because it’s s place where polar bears naturally live, see? Unlike in Iceland. They’re not unheard of in Iceland, but it’s not their habitat.
Did you note them size of those buses they do these bear tours in?
Did you note that these people don’t live alongside bears as much as in a place where there are often bears. These people don’t take risks either.
“When I was growing up, it was common for conservation officers to shoot 25 bears a season,” explains the mayor, Mike Spence, who is of Cree and Scottish descent.
Culvert traps, baited with seal scent, line the perimeter of the community; bears that are caught in them are taken to a holding facility, popularly known as the polar bear jail, where they are held for up to 30 days (without food, to enhance the deterrence factor of the experience), before being drugged and helicoptered to a spot safely away from town – or, if late enough in the season, on to the sea ice.
This is a single community, in a place where it’s actually feasible to anaesthetise a bear, then keep then without food in a place meant to keep bears, then fly them to a place where the bears naturally live. And it happens so often that it’s something that actually warrants constant attention, again unlike in Iceland.
Youre proposing the entire country starts putting down polar bear baits and traps, and then when they work once in a decade when a bear floats down on accident, they’ll fly a bear from Iceland to the Arctic?
The inuit folk I’ve talked to said that sometimes they have to shoot a polar bear if it’s harassing the village. When they kill one, it’s not uncommon to find bullets in it from the last time it was harassing a village. Polar bears are big and scary and we are destroying their habitat.
The irony of an American lecturing another country on finding an alternative to shooting.
You don’t want to hear from the best?
Sure, but America doesn’t really seem to be the best at alternatives to shooting…
Believe it or not? More shooting.
I still think about that terrible day. once harambe passed, the world fell apart.
Build a wall?
Wall, net, alert system, radar, video feeds, traps of some sort to relocate the bear to [some sort of arctica].
There are solutions where the bear doesn’t get shot, obviously. They just cost money. That’s all.
And there’s the rub.
Yeah just make a wall around all detached houses in Iceland or build traps on the whole shore lmao
Single combat?
TITS OUT!!!
This is going to be increasing in the coming years. The ice is melting, and they will be forced onto land to look for food.
Polar bears live on land.
And hunt on ice.
… and yet they survived the last interglacial, warmer than ours, with no sea ice in the arctic during summer.
I’d like to point out to you that Neanderthals and the premodern man did not have high-powered hunting rifles and didn’t live in almost every conceivable area on the planet with those hunting rifles.
You’re absolutely correct. Since we stopped allowing hunting* the number of polar bears has grown consistently.
Historically, overhunting was the polar bears’ greatest threat. From the 1800s up through the 1960s, commercial and later sport hunters greatly reduced polar bear numbers. Populations rebounded in most places after the five polar bear nations signed the International Agreement on the Conservation of Polar Bears. The Agreement halted commercial hunting and significantly curtailed sport hunting.
https://polarbearsinternational.org/news-media/articles/why-is-polar-bear-hunting-allowed
*) with caveats, as the article is really about
That’ll work out a lot better for them if people don’t just shoot them every time they see them on land.
That’s a lot of justification for killing something that can go fishing for food.
polar bears will absolutely hunt humans for food without a second thought. And you will not be able to outrun them or scare them away.
This one came quite close to homes, which is a reason for almost all towns with polar bears in the area to shoot them.
That this bear was the first in quite a while is a sad thing, but it’s understandable that the town doesn’t want a bear mauling people for a snack
See also: The town where guns are required
If it’s black, fight back. If it’s brown, lie down. If it’s white, good night.
What about grizzly bears?
Grizzly bears are brown.
You lie down in hopes that it will not perceive you as food and once it has determine you are no longer a threat, it will hopefully leave you with lots of wounds requiring stiches, but not completely dead.
Thanks, for some reason I thought grizzly bears had special rules.
I mean… if you think fighting a grizzly bear is a good Plan A, go for it.
And remember that black bears can be shades of brown.
Honestly, if it’s a bear good night.
This reads like it’s justified.
We destroy their habitats so they need to come to us to survive only to get killed by us.
Sounds like we are just bad guys.
It is justified.
It does seem justified to save a person’s life
Read the article. They don’t even go onto that. They have a shoot on sight policy regardless.
Yes. Because they’re not going to wait until someone got turned into kibble for something to do
Which isn’t the reason the Iceland government gives. Again. Go read the article. But also that’s the same excuse we almost made wolves extinct with. Animals as a rule avoid people when possible.
If you can see a polar bear it’s a threat.
They really aren’t like other bear species. They are an apex predator in an area where basically nothing other than another polar bear can even harm them. They see most things as food, including humans.
As a bonus, Iceland has a pretty wonky ecosystem that needs protecting as is and polar bears aren’t native to the island. They have to swim extreme distances to get there, making relocation extremely difficult and expensive, plus if they leave it be it will entirely disrupt other wildlife in the area, to say nothing of the human population.
As others have said, it sucks that it got shot, but Iceland especially has very limited options on how else to deal with it. Shoot on sight is, unfortunately, a very reasonable policy for them.
A whole ass country can’t afford to trap and relocate 1 Bear per decade?
That’s ridiculous.
Except that’s not how Polar Bears prefer to hunt. They prefer to hunt by holes over pack ice, where they wait for animals like seals to surface for air. When there’s no pack ice, which is what is happening thanks to global warming, they hunt for whatever they can on land. And if that land is inhabited by humans, that means humans.
I would say the potential to kill and eat humans, including infants, is excellent justification.
Does it suck that this is our fault to begin with? Absolutely. That doesn’t mean that human lives should be put at risk as well.
So tranquilizers and trailers don’t exist in Iceland? They couldn’t just send it back to Greenland?
So no map? You said it wasn’t an immediate threat. Where’s your evidence?
Also, why are you assuming it came from Greenland and why are you assuming that it would survive just being dropped off in some random place in the humongous island of Greenland anyway?
The article, read the article.
The article that says relocating it to Greenland was a non-starter?
The article that says this?
Greenland is an autonomous territory but also part of Denmark — refusing permission either on the grounds of concerns about disease, or because of the local population not being keen on a larger polar bear population on its glacier.
Yes that part and the part about the bear being in the trash outside. Not an immediate threat.
Again, please show me the map which shows how far away the bear was from a populated settlement.
Humans have lived in polar bear territory for centuries though. So we know it’s possible. Shooting endangered animals on sight because you don’t want to learn how to co-habitate a region is just peak shitty human.
And they’re bears they can absolutely find other sources of food without killing humans.
Brother you are literally required by law to carry a firearm in svalbard if you go outside of longyearbyen because if polar bears. Its pretty shitty if iceland(400k people) suddenly have to deal with the mess.
Really because Flying Squid’s link only recommends them. It requires a method of scaring them off. And life happens. We don’t have a right to just exterminate everything inconvenient around us.
With this logic humans exterminating everything around them is life just happening. Humans are animals. What i propose is that humans should stop ruining their natural habitat so they wont have to migrate to new places where they are dangerous to not only humans but probably other species that live there.
That would be nice, but it seems unlikely.
Yes, and those people all have guns to shoot polar bears.
That says you’re supposed to scare them off first. Shooting them is a last resort. Not the first resort. In Iceland they made it the first resort by law. That’s the issue.
Got it. As long as the children have a way of scaring off the hungry polar bear when it gets to the school playground, no worries.
Presumably that’s the responsibility of adults.
I see, so post multiple guards around any place children might be just in case the rare polar bear makes landfall on Iceland so it can get scared away instead of mauling children.
Very reasonable.
So you want a non-native animal with no suitable habitat and no food source other than humans to be given special preferential treatment over the humans that happen to live there, allowing it to roam and maul at it’s leisure while people politely try to shoo it away from the child buffet?
You have zero context and zero knowledge of the situation, the country or that environment but sit there on your high horse pretending to be morally superior to the people in actual mortal danger.
They are not in any more danger than other places that live with polar bears. That’s the point. They have the same situation but a different, worse, standard for dealing with it.
Also it’s a bear, it can fish on the coasts, in rivers, and hunt other animals just fine. It’s not some horror movie monster just coming after people.
Polar bears aren’t native there, and you have no idea what the natural area is like. It’s an island built on fishing, all the towns are on the coast, where the bears would like to hunt. Polar bears don’t live there, because it’s not an environment that can sustain them, and the biggest native wild animal is the arctic fox. Rest is all farm animals with some reindeer introduced to the highlands in the 70’s for game/sport hunting.
You’re arguing from pure ignorance.
How the fuck do you imagine “co-habitating” with polar bears??? That’s like starving a wolf and telling it to “co-habitate” with a baby.
Yes, it sucks that we have forced polar bears out of their natural habit and that they now have to hunt humans for food, however if something starts hunting humans for food it’s just gonna get killed.Nobody in the article said it was hunting humans. That’s pure exaggeration and fever dream shit from the comments section. This entire fucking comments section just assumes polar bears prefer to hunt humans.
Next time this happens you should volunteer to fly out and gently remove the polar bear for them.
They do kill and hunt humans. It’s a fact, not an assumption. It was a threat to people, going closer to inhabited areas. What were they supposed to do, check if this one is a vegan?
Nobody said it doesn’t happen. But the article doesn’t support that it was happening there.
It’s not just an assumption. Polar bears will hunt humans. They’re the absolute apex predator in their habitat so why shouldn’t they just hunt everything that moves?
Because most animals, including polar bears, have learned to be wary of groups of humans. And nobody is saying they won’t hunt humans. But the article doesn’t support that this one was. The comment section is acting like they’re obligated to hunt humans.
Polar bears are absolutely not wary of humans. You keep talking about the topic as if you don’t really know anything about them.
Lol, polar bears do not avoid humans, that’s like running away from food
So polar bears are basically dingos?
Dingos would hunt at packice holes if they had access to them?
Yes.
…no?
No but also yes.
But almost entirely no.
A polar bear ate my baby!
Also not true!
I wouldn’t say it’s sufficient justification, to be honest. I guess it depends on the population to some degree. But since we caused this problem, I would say moving even a whole village out of polar bear habitat is worth the cost of shooting even one, and we can suppose there will be more to come. I think we have a responsibility to get the hell out of their space, even at a huge cost to us.
Sorry… you think an entire village needs to be moved when a polar bear is seen in Iceland? How would that even work?
What do you mean how would that work? Polar bear habitat is declared national park, inhabitants get assistance moving elsewhere. Extremely expensive? Yes. Complicated? Not really.
I get that people aren’t gonna go for this, but I stand by the position that it would be the ethically correct thing, and we should be honest with ourselves that we are compromising on that.
Did you even read the headline of this article? This is the first polar bear seen in Iceland since 2016. They swim.
Where exactly is this habitat supposed to be? The entire coast?
If humans had any respect at all for the natural world, they’d feed themselves to the bear.
Okay, we’ll put you down as part of the “children should be eaten by bears if they had any respect for the natural world” faction.
There are still literally tens of thousands of polar bears.
As a global population for a species, that’s low.
But as something that would mean relocating entire towns full of people — when towns are usually doing something important production wise and can’t just be moved willy nilly — that’s a whole lot.
“Move an entire town”
Then half a year later when the bear moves to another town, do it again. And again. And again.
Seriously? Do you know the size of the town compared to the national population in Iceland?
That’s just a logistical nightmare which wouldn’t even accomplish any of the virtues you’re signaling so hard.
The polar bears aren’t following the people. It can absolutely hunt (and would prefer) a coastline.
Do you know where most towns in Iceland are?
On the coast.
Villages live in polar bear territory in Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Scandinavia, and Russia just fine. So Iceland has to learn some new rules. It’s no reason to contribute to the extinction of a species.
but can they actually go fishing for food? If a wild animal is wandering into human territory, there is usually a resource-limiting reason for it.
According to Iceland the entire island is human territory. I’m going to press F to doubt.
And they very much can. This was a rural home, not some suburb. But even that wouldn’t be the first time in the North.
ACAB
cubs? disagree
All cops are bears
Depends on the night club
Sometimes they are bikers, the Village People proved this years ago.
Hard agree, I’m rooting for the bucks over the cubs (and the packers over the bears)
If you’re going to regularly shoot a polar bear every 8 years, that seems like you’re starting a new tradition rather than following a policy.
Polar bears hunt humans for food. You cannot scare them away, you and your loved ones are prey. You will not win a fight against them, they are too big and too strong.
Unless you are fine being dinner, then yes, the polar bear is getting shot.
I side with the bears. We have enough humans.
Cool, go out there and volunteer to be their dinner.
Always some edgelord commenting on “we need less humans”, never willing to be the less human themselves though.
Somehow it’s always the case when it’s other people. Somehow I don’t expect you to allow yourself to be killed and eaten
Please lead by example
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https://www.dw.com/en/iceland-police-shoot-1st-polar-bear-sighted-in-years/a-70287266
Yet again, fuck off bitchbot.
https://news.ucsc.edu/2013/03/polar-bear-genomics.html
Polar bear brown bear hybridization
