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Project Noah Nature School
Ursus maritimus
Polar bears are solitary animals, only spending time around other bears to mate or, for females, when they have cubs. The cubs are born while the mother is hibernating, and emerge from the den in the spring when she wakes up. They will stay with their mother for around 3 years, during which time she will teach them all they need to know to survive. These cubs couldn't have been very old, as they were very small, so I think they were only a few months old. Before I was able to get my camera out, we watched the mother teaching the cubs to swim.
Polar bears have a circumpolar distribution and are found throughout the Arctic
For me, this was a very special spotting. I never even dreamed we would come across polar bear cubs, so this was fantastic. They were only about 50m from our ship, the cubs were curious but mama bear was wary (you can see her looking over her shoulder constantly). I could have watched them for hours!
Spotted on Jun 17, 2012
Submitted on Jul 12, 2012
83 Comments (1–25)
What a beautiful siting that must have been! How amazing!
Wow p
Thank you so much everyone who's commented on this :D I also loved watching the little bears tumbling away after mama bear!
Always one of my favorites...love the little bear bumping into Mama bear... : )
Love this!
Wow! Lovely polar bear family! Belated congrats, Laura.
Amazing pics!
Thanks for all the comments, everyone! :D
Congratulations on your feature in the blog.
Congratulations, Laura! Your awesome polar bears were featured in my blog, "It's Life - unique abilities for unique organisms" today!
http://blog.projectnoah.org/post/4414706...
I love image #3! Awesome!
Congrats Laura!
Laura, what a great find, and even more amazing photos of these beautiful creatures. Congratulations!
Congratulations on your honor for this lovely series! Well-deserved!
Congrats Laura.
Congratulations on this awesome series, Laura!
Awesome
Wonderful honor, LauraMaria. We look forward to seeing what you bring back from Antarctica!
Congratulations Laura super spot :):)
Oh wow, that's awesome!! Thanks for all the lovely comments, everyone :D I'm off to Antarctica this Sunday, so I hope I can come back with photos of more polar animals, from the other side of the globe!
Wow! Congratulations Laura! Thank you for sharing for special moments with these gorgeous creatures. Well deserved :)
Congratulations Laura! This wonderful series has been chosen as a runner up in the "2012 Best Spotting of the Year" Mammal category!
http://blog.projectnoah.org/post/3958700...
https://www.facebook.com/projectnoah/pos...
https://twitter.com/projectnoah/status/2...
Awww! What an amazing series! I especially love the photos #2 (the cub's face expression!) :)
So cute..Amazing collection...
Cute polar bears.ps I'm just a 8year old kid