Polar bear smackdown - August 12, 2008
Posted on behalf of Katrina Charles, BA Media Fellow
Part of the jaw of a young polar bear has been found in the stomach of a Greenland shark off the coast of Svalbard. Could this be the final answer to the eternal pub debate: who would win in a fight between a bear and a shark?
After all a myth says the sharks can leap out of the water and seize caribou standing on ice, so couldn't they easily munch on a swimming polar bear? Actually a much more mundane scenario is thought to be the case for this little polar bear: it was dead before the shark found it floating somewhere (Reuters) .
No one has seen the Greenland shark make a kill (Independent) . They are known to feed on seals, from stomach contents, which suggests they are quite quick, but a even a young bear, “would be a ferocious opponent”, as the Telegraph points out.
After the news that five scientists had to be airlifted out of Alaska after being menaced by a polar bear, this finding pushes scientists a little further down the food chain. Kit Kovacs, a seal expert at the Norwegian Polar Institute in Tromso, notes "I won't be going swimming there again." (Independent).
Sadly, the polar bear(11,500,000) also looses to the shark (74,300,000) in google smackdown. Scientists score 67,500,000.
Image: get out of the water! USFWS
