all of the other bears on that list may very well attack you with fatal results if they decide you’re a threat or an interloper, but the polar bear is the one that WANTS to eat you, and if you’re not careful, WILL eat you.
prey is scarce in the arctic and polar bears are big animals, so they’ve evolved to be long-distance stalking predators that will NEVER turn down a warm meaty meal, weird opposable thumbs or no!
if you see a polar bear in the arctic, even if you’re with a group, take extra care the next few days to make sure that it’s REALLY gone and not just following you at a distance to learn your habits and ambush you when you least expect it!
more than one arctic researcher didn’t change up their routine often enough and opened the station door for their smoke break only to find a polar bear waiting for them patiently on the other side, at which point they were dragged off onto the ice and never seen again.
I would say it’s a grizzly fate, but that pun would be simply unbearable.
Wish there were more animals like this. You’re always hearing “oh it’s not a man-eater it’s really quite nice” about every other beast. BORING. There should be an animal for every environment that always wants to eat people.
there’s a saying summarizing what to do if you encounter the three most common species of bears: “if it’s black fight back, if it’s brown lie down, if it’s white say goodnight.” (sometimes with the addition of “if it’s gummy put it in your tummy”) one time i read an article on what to do in bear attack events and they gave suuuper long and detailed answers for black and brown bears, and then just ended it with “As for a polar bear, rest in peace. :)”
black bears usually attack because they think you have food, they are relatively easily scared (i’ve heard them described as “big dangerous raccoons”) and if you can intimidate them they’ll generally back off. brown bears usually attack because they see you as a threat, so if you play dead (you wanna be on the ground for *at least 15 minutes after the brown bear leaves*) they’ll probably decide you’re not a threat and leave you alone.
polar bears, as op said, see humans as prey. they are BYFAR the biggest and strongest species of bear, it’s not even close. when standing upright, a black bear is about 5-6 feet tall, a brown bear is about 7-8 feet tall, and a polar bear is about 10-11 feet tall. THEY ARE THE LARGEST TERRESTRIAL PREDATOR ON EARTH. a polar bear could kick any other bear’s ass easily, so fighting back as a HUMAN is doomed to fail. and playing dead just makes their meal easier for them.
there is a place called Svalbard. it is a norwegian archipelago in the arctic ocean, and it is one of the northernmost human settlements in the entire world. in Svalbard, it is required by law to have a firearm with you to leave the settlement. you cannot visit Svalbard without a firearm permit. there are about 3 hundred polar bears in Svalbard and about 3 thousand more in nearby areas.
here’s an amazing 2 minute video of a cameraman who locked himself in a transparent cage to film a polar bear, which promptly attempted to kill him. cage did its job and protected him and he got some absolutely insane footage. the polar bear in this video is a female one, male polar bears are even bigger.
The thing with bears is that they don’t go after humans unless they’re starving. It’s an unknown risk for a relatively small amount of food. The thing with polar bears is that with the environment they’re in, you’re more likely to find one that is starving. There’s a lot of sensationalism about polar bears being blood-thirsty monsters with an insatiable hunger for man-flesh, but it doesn’t hold up under inquiry. You absolutely should be careful and take necessary precautions because you never know when a bear will be hungry enough to try it, but polar bears casually hunting humans is an exaggeration.
Frankly I’d fear the grizzly most. Black bears are a bit more casual about hunting humans, sloth bears are unpredictable, and polar bears are huge and likely very hungry, but grizzlies are vigorously protective of both food and cubs.
