Would the Arctic fox, the raven, the ivory gull, the herring gull and the great mayor survive in the Arctic if there were not polar bears around? Researchers from the University of Manitoba, the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance and the University of Alberta hardly think so, they write in an article which was published at the end of October Oikos.
All these scavengers are supplied with food because polar bears leave eaten carcasses everywhere. Gefundenes Fressen keeps all those species alive in the vast ice desert. And there are probably many more species in the Arctic that depend on the polar bear in this way. Think of foxes, wolves, brown bears, wolverines, snowy owls and rough-legged hawks.
It is no small feat that the polar bear, as a top predator, leaves behind for other animals on the ice and surrounding land. Every year, a polar bear kills 1,001 kilograms of “mammal biomass,” the researchers calculated, which mainly amounts to seals. The polar bear is mainly concerned with the fat layer of its prey, about 30 percent of the biomass remains behind as a carcass on the ice. Like a true polar butcher, the polar bear provides the Arctic with 7.6 million kilos of meat.
Due to the cold in the Arctic, the bait often remains available to other animals for a longer period of time, because the meat does not decay as quickly, especially when it is frozen. Ultimately, even underwater animals benefit from the polar bear’s work. Carcasses that sink to the bottom are outwitted by fish and crabs.
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