Etymologists crying and shaking right now at the thought of Antarctica (meaning: without bears) gaining the one animal it’s not supposed to have
This comment sent me down a rabbit hole. I had no idea the arctic is called that because it was the Greek for ‘of the bear’ because they used Ursa Major to guide them north. And the the arctic is the most northerly point.
Fucking wild. Mind blown.
I read that as entomologist for a second and was really confused
Figured it had something to do with fleas
You may find you struggle with step 1.
I’ve been trying to do step one for years. But my bastard relatives refuse to die, and also refuse to be rich. Selfish I call it.
I think the penguins would learn to just swim away, and the bears would starve since they would need to expend a lot of effort for a small bird versus the calorie-dense seals they’re used to.
To be fair, some penguins aren’t exactly small
The Emperor protects
Antarctica is generally colder than the Arctic. They would almost certainly be stuck along the coastlines of Antarctica like the penguins are, since the interior average temperatures rival the coldest ones ever recorded in the Arctic. They should be fine there, but then that means they have a very limited distribution and that penguins and seals consequently are always forced to share an environment with the polar bears. Because they’re not used to the polar bears, their populations would likely be destroyed, leaving the polar bears to starve. Unlike in the Arctic, too, they would have nowhere to retreat if their food supply ran out. Outward is hundreds of kilometers of ocean, and inward is hundreds of kilometers of unsurvivable desert.
they would have nowhere to retreat if their food supply ran out.
Um. Hello? There are scientists there.
Which means scientific papers, then tourists, then garbage and a symbiotic relationship, then the eventual domestication of polar bears.
Not, you know, the international scientific community treating scientists like cats.
