Researchers had tagged the five-year-old mother, also known as \u201cbear X33991,\u201d<\/a> and her 10-to-11-month-old cub in the spring in the northeastern Canadian province of Manitoba. Come fall, the scientists noticed she had another untagged cub with her as her family grew, this time by seeming \u201cadoption.\u201d<\/p>\n This discovery, which was captured on video, marks only the 13th such case seen in the 4,600 bears that have been tracked over the last 45 years in the Western Hudson Bay polar bear population.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is unusual,\u201d said Alyssa McCall, a staff scientist at Polar Bears International.<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t really know why it happens or how often – but we know it doesn\u2019t happen often at all.\u201d<\/p>\n open image in gallery<\/p>\n A mother polar bear in Canada has made the rare decision to adopt – and the new family was caught on video. (Credit: Dave Sandford \/ Discover Churchill (Wildlife Photographer, Guide, and Polar Bears International Photo Ambassador))<\/p>\n However, adoption is not limited to polar bears in Canada. It\u2019s also been seen in Norway and the High Arctic, Dr. Evan Richardson, a polar bear research scientist at Environment and Climate Change Canada, said. <\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve seen females take on whole litters of cubs, two or three cubs that aren\u2019t even their own,\u201d he noted. <\/p>\n Although some orphaned cubs have been adopted, adoptions has also been seen with cubs whose biological mothers were still alive, as well. But, why that happens isn\u2019t fully known. <\/p>\n \u201cWe really think it\u2019s just because they\u2019re so maternally charged and such good mothers. They just can\u2019t leave a cub crying on the tundra so they pick them up and take them along with them.\u201d Richardson said. <\/p>\n open image in gallery<\/p>\n The chance of survival for adopted polar bear cubs is much greater than if they\u2019re left alone (Credit: Dave Sandford \/ Discover Churchill (Wildlife Photographer, Guide, and Polar Bears International Photo Ambassador))<\/p>\n For \u201cbear X33991\u201d and her new cub, what exactly happened to the birth bear remains a mystery. Even after the researchers analyze genetic samples taken from the cub, McCall said they may never know what happened to its biological mother.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a small chance we could find out, but there\u2019s a good chance we\u2019ll never know,\u201d she explained. <\/p>\n Still, adoption is a good thing for this cub\u2019s future. Adoption helps to increase the cub\u2019s chance of survival to adulthood, and three out of the 13 adoption cases have survived in this population of polar bears.<\/p>\n That might not seem like a lot, but the survival rate for any polar bear cub to adulthood is around 50 percent, with a mother helping to teach the cub to hunt and survive for approximately 2.5 years.<\/p>\n Without a mother, the little cubs have almost no chance. <\/p>\n open image in gallery<\/p>\n The mother polar bear walks, flanked by her two cubs (Dave Sandford \/ Discover Churchill (Wildlife Photographer, Guide, and Polar Bears International Photo Ambassador))<\/p>\n Polar bears across the world – young and old – are being increasingly threatened by human-caused climate change, too. Climate change is shrinking the ice the bears live on as temperatures rise, making it harder to hunt and live. <\/p>\n It\u2019s even forcing changes in polar bear DNA<\/a>, according to a recent study<\/a>.<\/p>\n More than two-thirds of polar bears are predicted to be extinct by the year 2050, researchers at the U.K.-based University of East Angila said.<\/p>\n With these threats already impacting the region, Richardson said adoption is a good thing for bears around Churchill, where they discovered the cub.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s just nice to know that the bears are looking out for each other,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":204032,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[61,60,82,263],"class_list":{"0":"post-204031","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204031\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Dave-Sandford_Mom-Cubs_009.jpeg\")
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