Polar bears are eating dolphins because of global warming, a new research suggests. The change in polar bear food choices was linked the effect of climate change to the Arctic.
Titled "White-beaked dolphins trapped in the ice and eaten by polar bears," the research was authored by Norwegian scientists Jon Aars and Magnus Andersen with French scientists Agnès Brenière and Samuel Blanc.
In April 2014, the researches spotted a polar bear, an adult male, eating two white-beaked dolphins in the Norwegian High Arctic and observed it for the first time. The findings were recently published in the scientific journal Polar Research.
The researchers continued to observe at least six other polar bears eating dolphin carcasses. These dolphins typically travel only to the Norwegian High Arctic in the summer and until they had not been found far north in the spring of 2014.
As the researchers described, the adult male polar bear observed eating a dolphin was very skinny as its ribs were visible. They also suggest that the dolphins were "trapped in the ice after strong northerly winds the days before, and possibly killed when forced to surface for air at a small opening in the ice."
According to the researchers, the warming of the Arctic is "significantly changing the ecosystem and relations between species."
What made the polar bears' behavior even more unusual behavior, is when a polar bear covers his dolphin with snow to save it for later.
Aars told Newsweek that the dolphin was "only partially covered with snow" while but the bear was "in the process of covering it" when he and his fellow researchers arrived in the Norwegian High Arctic. He said had they arrived there later, the dolphin would have been covered with snow.