This is a spectacular scene captured by BBC cameras, as part of their documentary series The Hunt. A hungry polar bear moves through the pack ice in search of food. Visibly thin, it can't afford to pass any more time without eating.
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After spotting a seal sitting on a piece of ice, the bear approaches quietly. To avoid being betrayed by its smell, it takes a wide detour in order to always stay against the wind of its prey. Sneaking up from behind, the bear gives the seal no chance, even though it tries to escape by swimming away.
The victim is quite small but it's fat alone contains 100,000 calories, enough to feed this bear for at least a week.
Polar bears are endangered
This kind of spectacle is unfortunately not rare. These polar bears are particularly well adapted to the Arctic environment. Their skin is black, allowing them to absorb the heat of the sun while their slightly webbed paws allow them to walk through the snow easily.
As we see in the video, polar bears are great hunters. They can locate a carcass several kilometres away. They have a particularly developed sense of smell, helping them find their favourite prey: seals. The pack ice is their natural environment, yet it's decreasing by 13% per year. This makes things complicated for these great predators, among the first to be affected by the melting ice. Less ice means less prey to hunt, which means that the population continues to decline regularly. Their number could fall by one third by 2050.
