![\"Two](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/mother-cubs.jpg\")
Two pairs of mother and polar bear cubs share a seal carcass. (Submitted by Jon Sigurdsson)<\/p>\nWhen Jon Sigurdsson from\u00a0Hafnarfjordur\u00a0in Iceland was travelling\u00a0in northern Labrador\u00a0earlier this week, he captured a sight on his camera he thought he would never see \u2014\u00a0a mother polar bear fighting a black bear.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sigurdsson described the encounter as remarkable and unexpected.\u00a0He\u00a0had been\u00a0travelling down from Baffin Island into the Torngat Mountains with others on an expedition,\u00a0and\u00a0told CBC they\u00a0had been seeing plenty of polar bears.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But on Tuesday, they saw a mother and her cub on the shore eating a seal.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“This was quite enjoyable to witness.\u00a0We kept a good distance. And all\u00a0of a sudden we saw another mother and cub, also polar bears,”\u00a0said Sigurdsson.<\/p>\n
“And they approached and there was a little fight between the mothers, but apparently there was enough of seal.”<\/p>\n
Two pairs of mother and polar bear cubs share a seal carcass. (Submitted by Jon Sigurdsson)<\/p>\n
He said the two pairs of mothers and cubs shared the seal carcass but it was what happened next that was extraordinary.<\/p>\n
“We could see\u00a0a black bear\u00a0a little bit further up the hill approaching the polar bears and we said to ourselves that this is not going to happen. There is not going to be any sort of confrontation, but the black bear continued\u00a0and it made its way all the way to the polar bears. And\u00a0the polar bears were not happy with this …\u00a0and there was an attack,” said Sigurdsson.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/black-bear-approaches-polar-bear-and-cubs.jpg\")
The black bear thought it would be able to get in on the action and share with the polar bears. (Submitted by Jon Sigurdsson )<\/p>\n
But the mother polar bear eventually scared off the black bear, he said, adding he had never seen anything like it in his many years of travelling.<\/p>\n
Sigurdsson had previously heard stories of other folks in the same area\u00a0seeing polar bears and black bears at\u00a0the same time, but nothing like his\u00a0encounter. Along with\u00a0his colleagues, he hasn’t been able to find similar encounters when\u00a0searching for photos.\u00a0<\/p>\n
LISTEN | Hear\u00a0about the encounter in Sigurdsson’s own words:\u00a0<\/p>\n
Labrador Morning4:33A bear of a showdown: photo captures polar bear and black bear squaring off<\/p>\n
You may have heard of Rocky vs. Apollo or Freddy vs. Jason but the Torngat Mountains was the site of another titanic showdown: polar bear vs. black bear. A photograph showing the two creatures squaring off has been making the rounds of social media. We hear from the photographer who captured the action.<\/p>\n
“It feels really enjoyable being able to to share this and so people can see\u00a0what happened. Many people don’t believe this is actual,\u00a0it’s some kind of AI generated, but it it’s not, so that …\u00a0feels really good.”<\/p>\n
Sigurdsson says\u00a0he will remember the day for the rest of his life.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/polar-bears-after-enjoying-their-seal.jpg\")
The polar bears were eating well that day in the Torngat Mountains. (Submitted by Jon Sigurdsson)<\/p>\n
Download our\u00a0free CBC News app<\/a>\u00a0to sign up for push alerts for CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. Sign up for our\u00a0daily headlines newsletter here<\/a>. Click\u00a0here to visit our landing page<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Jon Sigurdsson from\u00a0Hafnarfjordur\u00a0in Iceland was travelling\u00a0in northern Labrador\u00a0earlier this week, he captured a sight on his camera…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":176966,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,66,323],"class_list":{"0":"post-176965","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176965\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/176966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}