About the formidable predators of the Arctic. Why you should never try polar bear liver

2024 Author: Isabella Gilson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:14

The largest and most beautiful inhabitant of the Arctic is the polar bear. The number of these animals is not very high - at present, scientists have only about 25 thousand individuals. The polar bear is listed in the Red Book because of the destructive actions of mankind.

Appearance

White bears are very large animals. The weight of the smallest representatives is at least 100 kg, while individual males can weigh up to one ton! The entire carcass of a bear is covered with a huge layer of white or slightly yellowish wool, which contributes to improved thermoregulation, because they live in areas with very low temperatures. In addition to wool, a thick layer of subcutaneous fat helps the animal to escape from the cold. The polar bear is different from other members of the bear community - it has a slightly different body structure, coat and skin color (they have black). The polar bear has huge claws, thanks to which it can hunt effectively. Also, these predators are endowed with excellent vision, sensitive hearing andwonderful sense of smell.

Habitat

Polar bears prefer to live near the sea and live mainly on the floating ice of the Arctic. However, in different places their numbers are not the same - somewhere the bears live very densely, somewhere you can hardly meet them at all. These predators lead a nomadic lifestyle. An important criterion for choosing a place of residence for bears is the amount of food.

Food

The main food of polar bears are seals. Their predators lie in wait at the holes and pull them onto the ice with powerful blows of their huge paws. Almost always, lard and seal skin are used for food, but sometimes, when food becomes worse, the bear can eat the entire carcass of the victim. In addition to seals, polar bears can hunt fish, birds, sometimes walruses, and eat carrion. In the summer, during the famine, bears have to eat berries, seaweed or leaves.

Existing problems

There are fewer and fewer polar bears these days.

First of all, this is due to the fact that the offspring of bears appears quite rarely (the female can give birth to cubs only once every three years) and in small numbers (from one to three babies). At the age of one year, cubs are threatened by males, mortality is high at this time.

Secondly, poaching brings huge damage to the population. The price on the "black" markets for the skin of an adult or for small cubs is very high.

Third, a special danger is changesclimatic conditions. Global warming causes the ice to melt earlier, the bears do not have time to gain the necessary reserves of fat, and in summer hunting becomes less and less effective. In search of food, these giants have to travel ever greater distances, not all individuals can stand it, exhausted adult bears and young cubs die.

Fourthly, general environmental pollution leads to fatal consequences for polar bears as well. The predator lives for a long time, so in its entire life it manages to accumulate all sorts of chemicals, heavy metals, and products of the oil industry. All this affects both the life expectancy and the reproductive functions of the bears themselves, as well as their diet - seals, fish, walruses.

Polar bears are dangerous predators. If you suddenly find yourself in close proximity to it, then most likely you will receive a blow to the head with a paw or a fatal bite. However, a person is still the only one who can harm a polar bear. Indeed, it is precisely because of human activities that climatic conditions are deteriorating, which leads to a decrease in the population of these predators. In addition, these animals have been hunted for a long time, either just for fun or for the purpose of selling bear carcasses.

The only thing poachers can't find a use for is polar bear liver. It, like a filter, accumulates various chemicals and elements during the life of a predator. However, the liver of a polar bear is not poisonous. This is a completely normal animal organ,performing its immediate life function. But at the same time, the liver of a polar bear contains gigantic reserves of vitamin A (retinol), since the main food of this animal (seals) feeds on marine life, the fat of which replenishes vitamin reserves.

Of course, vitamin A is good for vision, skin, hair and nails, but it all depends on the dose consumed. For the human body, the daily norm is from 3000 to 3700 IU of retinol. One gram of polar bear liver contains up to 20,000 IU of this vitamin. This is a huge amount! Therefore, it is extremely dangerous for a person to use this product.

What happens if you eat polar bear liver?

Earlier, before certain scientific studies and the establishment of causes, there were frequent cases of serious poisoning. No one could understand the cause of severe intoxication of the body, headaches, indigestion, impaired consciousness, body aches, further skin discharge, in severe cases - enlargement of internal organs, hemorrhages and, ultimately, deaths. Such symptoms appeared just after eating the liver of a polar bear, as well as whales, seals, walruses. Scientists subsequently suggested that, most likely, the matter was in the excessive intake of any substances from these products into the human blood. Further research confirmed this theory, and it turned out that it is precisely the huge amount of vitamin A in the liver of these marine animals that leads to such poisoning.

Thus, finally, it turned out what happened before with sad results and why you can’t eatpolar bear liver in general.