🔗 Share this article

Scientists tracking wild polar bears in Canada's northern regions observed something exceedingly rare this autumn: a mother bear adopting a cub that was not biologically her own.

The five-year-old maternal bear and her nearly year-old cubs were spotted and filmed during the yearly polar bear migration along the Hudson Bay's western shore near the Manitoba town of Churchill, an locale renowned for its concentration of Arctic bears.

"It's unusual," stated a scientist with an international bear organization. "We don't really know why it occurs...but we know it is a rare event at all."

This represents only the thirteenth documented instance of adoption out of 4,600 bears researched for almost fifty years in the area.

The mother bear was initially tagged as she emerged from her maternity den this spring. Initially, she had one cub, which researchers tagged for study.

In the autumn, she was spotted once more, but this time with a pair of cubs - the initially tagged cub and a second that was untagged. Researchers are uncertain what happened to the new cub's biological mother, but they are trying to identify her using DNA analysis.

"The bears need every advantage they can get these days with climate change," commented a wildlife biologist. "If females have the opportunity to take in an additional youngster and care for it and successfully wean it, it's a good thing for the bears."

Polar bears in the natural world only have a fifty-fifty survival rate of living into adulthood, but having a mother providing care boosts their chances.

The young bears appear to be healthy, according to experts, and they will probably stay with their adoptive mother until they are about two-and-a-half years old.

Next, the family is expected to head out to the frozen ocean, where the youngsters will learn from their mother how to hunt seals and survive on their own.

"It's just nice to know that the animals are caring for each other," concluded the researcher.