What Do Polar Bears Eat?

It's an unusual topic and I spent around 90 minutes today reading up on Polar Bears and their 'dinners'.

So lets start with an odd fact which few people grasp....Polar Bears don't eat Penguins.  Why?  You'd think some type of relationship thing?  Well....no.  Penguins only frequent the South Pole region.  Polar Bears only frequent the North Pole region (to include the US, Canada, Iceland, Greenland, Russia, Norway, Sweden, and Finland).  So they never meet up.  However if a couple of Penguins did meet up Pete, the Polar Bear....they'd likely be a mid-day snack.

Polar Bears do like the taste of Seals, along with various Whales and Walruses.  Geese and bird eggs?  Yes....that's on the list as well.  Fish?  Yep, and various types.  Rabbits and mice?  That's on the menu as well.  The various berries that might grow in the northern 'circle'?  Polar Bears will go for that, but it's not worth the low calorie count.

So here's the thing, if you go and read summaries by guys who spend weeks out in the wild and observe Polar Bears....their primary source of food is Seals (adults and pups).  If you subtract Seals or hunt them out of existence....then you got a problem.  Whales and Walruses, down on the list?  You are mostly talking about the caucus of Whales, that might accidentally end up on some beach.  The Walrus thing is a good number two source of food for Polar Bears. 

So if you have a Polar Bear standing in front of you and looking 'sickly'?  Well....it's fairly good odds that he's in the same age group as those old sickly lions that you occasionally see on Mutual of Omaha shows, and toward the last year of his life. 

If you wanted to wipe the Polar Bears out?  You'd have to go and hunt the Seals and Walrus populations down to nothing.  Presently, no one seems to have that agenda on their list.