Back in 2017, some tourists on a cruise ship had an unforgettable moment in one of the most remote places on earth.
It happened on a hillside on Wrangel Island in the North Arctic Ocean off of northeastern Siberia.
From the ship, the tourists thought they saw sheep moving along the hillside. But when they looked closer, they realized they were looking at a completely different type of animal.
The truth? Hundreds of polar bears had gathered together on the Arctic coast to feast on a dead beached whale.
The beached whale seemed to feed many stomachs, including families with up to four cubs.
“There were at least 230 polar bears, including single males, single females, mothers with cubs and even two mothers with four cubs each,” a spokesperson for the Wrangel Island Nature Preserve said, according to The Dodo.
With only about 20,000-25,000 polar bears left in the wild, the tourists on the boat saw about one percent of the total polar bear population in one place. Pretty amazing, right?
It’s a welcome sight to see so many polar bears have a healthy meal, especially since the threats to the species are very serious. Because of melting ice in the Arctic, polar bears can get stranded and can’t always get close enough to seals to hunt them and get the nourishment they need.
If we don’t succeed in slowing down climate change, polar bears will be completely gone from the wild by 2100, according to researchers at Polar Bears International.
Fortunately, these polar bears didn’t have to worry about food, at least for a little while. And the tourists who saw them got a memory to last a lifetime.
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