{"id":24723,"date":"2025-07-26T04:56:12","date_gmt":"2025-07-26T04:56:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/24723\/"},"modified":"2025-07-26T04:56:12","modified_gmt":"2025-07-26T04:56:12","slug":"polar-bear-gnaws-dead-sperm-whale-why-evolution-is-true","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/24723\/","title":{"rendered":"Polar bear gnaws dead sperm whale \u2013 Why Evolution Is True"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of my \u201cbucket list\u201d goals of going to the Arctic was to see polar bears (also puffins, walruses other birds, and whales). I got them all, but I didn\u2019t get close enough to a puffin.<\/p>\n

This photo series, one or two I showed before at much lower resolution, comprises two of these elements: a polar bear and a whale, identified by our whale experts as a sperm whale (I can\u2019t verify this). Near the northernmost part of our trip, at roughly 83\u00ba north latitude (a record for the ship itself and everybody on it), we saw an amazing sight: a polar bear (Ursus maritimus<\/a>) gobbling down the blubber of a dead sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus<\/a>) on top of an ice floe. So here you see the world\u2019s largest terrestrial predator gnawing on the world\u2019s largest marine predator.\u00a0 It is a rarity, as both animals are scarce, and to see them together raised the hair on my neck. It was so amazing! Here are a few shots:<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t ask me how a dead whale got on an ice floe rather than sinking in the sea.\u00a0 This sight alone was, to me, worth the price of the trip. But there was of course a lot more, which I\u2019ll post in the coming weeks. These, though, are my favorite photos. Even an expert polar photographer doesn\u2019t come across situations like this. (Click \u2019em to enlarge.)<\/p>\n

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If the resolution leaves a bit to be desired, this was taken with my point-and-shoot Panasonic Lumix DMC ZS60 camera with the lens cranked all the way out to 30X.\u00a0 I highly recommend this camera for travel, as it fits in your pocket but takes a lot better photos than does an iPhone.<\/p>\n

More to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of my \u201cbucket list\u201d goals of going to the Arctic was to see polar bears (also puffins,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24724,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,66,323],"class_list":{"0":"post-24723","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\/24723","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=24723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24723\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}