Polar bears have coexisted and interacted with
circumpolar peoples for millennia. "White bears" are mentioned as commercial items in the Japanese book
Nihon Shoki in the seventh century. It is not clear if these were polar bears or white-coloured brown bears. During the
Middle Ages, Europeans considered white bears to be a novelty and were more familiar with brown- and black-coloured bears. The first known written account of the polar bear in its natural environment is found in the 13th-century anonymous Norwegian text
Konungs skuggsjá, which mentions that "the white bear of Greenland wanders most of the time on the ice of the sea, hunting seals and whales and feeding on them" and says the bear is "as skillful a swimmer as any seal or whale". '', by
Richard Westall (1809) Over the next centuries, several European explorers would mention polar bears and describe their habits. Such accounts became more accurate after the
Enlightenment, and both living and dead specimens were brought back. Nevertheless, some fanciful reports continued, including the idea that polar bears cover their noses during hunts. A relatively accurate drawing of a polar bear is found in
Henry Ellis's work ''A Voyage to Hudson's Bay
(1748). Polar bears were formally classified as a species by Constantine Phipps after his 1773 voyage to the Arctic. Accompanying him was a young Horatio Nelson, who was said to have wanted to get a polar bear coat for his father but failed in his hunt. In his 1785 edition of Histoire Naturelle'',
Comte de Buffon mentions and depicts a "sea bear", clearly a polar bear, and "land bears", likely brown and black bears. This helped promote ideas about
speciation. Buffon also mentioned a "white bear of the forest", possibly a
Kermode bear.
Exploitation Polar bears were hunted as early as 8,000 years ago, as indicated by archaeological remains at
Zhokhov Island in the
East Siberian Sea. The oldest graphic depiction of a polar bear shows it being hunted by a man with three dogs. This
rock art was among several
petroglyphs found at
Pegtymel in Siberia and dates from the fifth to eighth centuries. Before access to firearms, native people used lances, bows and arrows and hunted in groups accompanied by dogs. Though hunting typically took place on foot, some people killed swimming bears from boats with a harpoon. Polar bears were sometimes killed in their dens. Killing a polar bear was considered a
rite of passage for boys in some cultures. Native people respected the animal and hunts were subject to strict rituals. Bears were harvested for the fur, meat, fat, tendons, bones and teeth. The fur was worn and slept on, while the bones and teeth were made into tools. For the Netsilik, the individual who finally killed the bear had the right to its fur while the meat was passed to all in the party. Some people kept the cubs of slain bears. Norsemen in Greenland traded polar bear furs in the Middle Ages. Russia traded polar bear products as early as 1556, with
Novaya Zemlya and
Franz Josef Land being important commercial centres. Large-scale hunting of bears at Svalbard occurred since at least the 18th century, when no less than 150 bears were killed each year by Russian explorers. In the next century, more Norwegians were harvesting the bears on the island. From the 1870s to the 1970s, around 22,000 of the animals were hunted in total. Over 150,000 polar bears in total were either killed or captured in Russia and Svalbard, from the 18th to the 20th century. In the Canadian Arctic, bears were harvested by commercial whalers especially if they could not get enough whales. The
Hudson's Bay Company is estimated to have sold 15,000 polar bear coats between the late 19th century and early 20th century. In the mid-20th century, countries began to regulate polar bear harvesting, culminating in the 1973 agreement. They are attracted to the smell of human-made foods, particularly at garbage dumps and may be shot when they encroach on private property. In
Churchill, Manitoba, local authorities maintain a "
polar bear jail" where nuisance bears are held until the sea ice freezes again. Climate change has increased conflicts between the two species. From 1870 to 2014, there were an estimated 73 polar bear attacks on humans, which led to 20 deaths. The majority of attacks were by hungry males, typically subadults, while female attacks were usually in defence of the young. In comparison to brown and American black bears, attacks by polar bears were more often near and around where humans lived. This may be due to the bears getting desperate for food and thus more likely to seek out human settlements. As with the other two bear species, polar bears are unlikely to target more than two people at once. Though popularly thought of as the most dangerous bear, the polar bear is no more aggressive to humans than other species.
Captivity The polar bear was for long a particularly sought-after species for exotic animal collectors, since it was relatively rare and remote living and had a reputation as a ferocious beast. It is one of the few marine mammals that will reproduce well in captivity. They were originally kept only by royals and elites. The
Tower of London got
a polar bear as early as 1252 under
King Henry III. In 1609,
James VI and I of Scotland, England and Ireland was given two polar bear cubs by the sailor
Jonas Poole, who got them during a trip to
Svalbard. At the end of the 17th century,
Frederick I of Prussia housed polar bears in
menageries with other wild animals. He had their claws and canines removed to allow them to perform mock fights safely. Around 1726,
Catherine I of Russia gifted two polar bears to
Augustus II the Strong of Poland, who desired them for his animal collection. Later, polar bears were displayed to the public in
zoos and
circuses. In early 19th century, the species was exhibited at the
Exeter Exchange in London, as well as menageries in Vienna and Paris. The first zoo in North America to exhibit a polar bear was the
Philadelphia Zoo in 1859. Polar bear exhibits were innovated by
Carl Hagenbeck, who replaced cages and pits with settings that mimicked the animal's natural environment. In 1907, he revealed a complex
panoramic structure at the
Tierpark Hagenbeck Zoo in Hamburg consisting of exhibits made of artificial snow and ice separated by moats. Different polar animals were displayed on each platform, giving the illusion of them living together. Starting in 1975,
Hellabrunn Zoo in Munich housed its polar bears in an exhibit which consisted of a glass barrier, a house, concrete platforms mimicking ice floes and a large pool. Inside the house were maternity dens, and rooms for the staff to prepare and store the food. The exhibit was connected to an outdoor yard for extra room. Similar naturalistic and "immersive" exhibits were opened in the early 21st century, such as the "Arctic Ring of Life" at the
Detroit Zoo and Ontario's
Cochrane Polar Bear Habitat. Many zoos in Europe and North America have stopped keeping polar bears because of the size and costs of their complex exhibits. In North America, the population of polar bears in zoos reached its zenith in 1975 with 229 animals and declined in the 21st century. '' in the Netherlands Polar bears have been trained to perform in circuses. Bears in general, being large, powerful, easy to train and human-like in form, were widespread in circuses, and the white coat of polar bears made them particularly attractive. Circuses helped change the polar bear's image from a fearsome monster to something more comical. Performing polar bears were used in 1888 by
Circus Krone in Germany and later in 1904 by the
Bostock and Wombwell Menagerie in England. Circus director Wilhelm Hagenbeck trained up to 75 polar bears to slide into a large tank through a chute. He began performing with them in 1908 and they had a particularly well-received show at the
Hippodrome in London. Other circus tricks performed by polar bears involved tightropes, balls, roller skates and motorcycles. One of the most famous polar bear trainers in the second half of the twentieth century was the East German Ursula Böttcher, whose small stature contrasted with that of the large bears. Starting in the late 20th century, most polar bear acts were retired, and the use of these bears for the circus is prohibited in the US. Several captive polar bears gained celebrity status in the late 20th and early 21st century, notably
Knut of the
Berlin Zoological Garden, who was rejected by his mother and had to be hand-reared by zookeepers. Another bear,
Binky of the
Alaska Zoo in Anchorage, became famous for attacking two visitors who got too close. Captive polar bears may pace back and forth, a
stereotypical behaviour. In one study, they were recorded to have spent 14 percent of their days pacing.
Gus of the
Central Park Zoo was prescribed
Prozac by a therapist for constantly swimming in his pool. To reduce stereotypical behaviours, zookeepers provide the bears with enrichment items to trigger their play behaviour. In sufficiently warm conditions,
algae concentrated in the medulla of their fur's guard hairs may cause zoo polar bears to appear green.
Cultural significance Polar bears have prominent roles in
Inuit culture and
religion. The deity
Torngarsuk is sometimes imagined as a giant polar bear. He resides underneath the sea floor in an
underworld of the dead and has power over sea creatures.
Kalaallit shamans would worship him through singing and dancing and were expected to be taken by him to the sea and consumed if he considered them worthy. Polar bears were also associated with the goddess
Nuliajuk who was responsible for their creation, along with other sea creatures. It is believed that shamans could reach the Moon or the bottom of the ocean by riding on a
guardian spirit in the form of a polar bear. Some folklore involves people turning into or disguising themselves as polar bears by donning their skins or the reverse, with polar bears removing their skins. In
Inuit astronomy, the
Pleiades star cluster is conceived of as a polar bear trapped by dogs while
Orion's Belt, the
Hyades and
Aldebaran represent hunters, dogs and a wounded bear respectively.
Nordic folklore and
literature have also featured polar bears. In
The Tale of Auðun of the West Fjords, written around 1275, a poor man named Auðun spends all his money on a polar bear in Greenland, but ends up wealthy after giving the bear to the king of Denmark. In the 14th-century manuscript
Hauksbók, a man named Odd kills and eats a polar bear that killed his father and brother. In the story of
The Grimsey Man and the Bear, a mother bear nurses and rescues a farmer stuck on an ice floe and is repaid with sheep meat. 18th-century Icelandic writings mention the legend of a "polar bear king" known as the . This beast was depicted as a polar bear with "ruddy cheeks" and a
unicorn-like horn, which glows in the dark. The king could understand when humans talk and was considered to be very astute. Two Norwegian fairy tales, "
East of the Sun and West of the Moon" and "
White-Bear-King-Valemon", involve white bears turning into men and seducing women. Drawings of polar bears have been featured on maps of the northern regions. Possibly the earliest depictions of a polar bear on a map is the Swedish
Carta marina of 1539, which has a white bear on Iceland or "Islandia". A 1544 map of North America includes two polar bears near
Quebec. Notable paintings featuring polar bears include
François-Auguste Biard's
Fighting Polar Bears (1839) and
Edwin Landseer's
Man Proposes, God Disposes (1864). Polar bears have also been filmed for cinema. An Inuit polar bear hunt was shot for the 1932 documentary
Igloo, while the 1974 film
The White Dawn filmed a simulated stabbing of a trained bear for a scene. In the film
The Big Show (1961), two characters are killed by a circus polar bear. The scenes were shot using animal trainers instead of the actors. In modern literature, polar bears have been characters in both
children's fiction, like Hans Beer's
Little Polar Bear and the Whales and Sakiasi Qaunaq's
The Orphan and the Polar Bear, and fantasy novels, like
Philip Pullman's
His Dark Materials series. In radio,
Mel Blanc provided the vocals for
Jack Benny's pet polar bear Carmichael on
The Jack Benny Program. The polar bear is featured on flags and coats of arms, like the
coat of arms of Greenland, and in many advertisements, notably
for Coca-Cola since 1922. As
charismatic megafauna, polar bears have been used to
raise awareness of the dangers of climate change. Aurora the polar bear is a giant
marionette created by
Greenpeace for climate protests. The
World Wide Fund for Nature has sold
plush polar bears as part of its "Arctic Home" campaign. Photographs of polar bears have been featured in
National Geographic and
Time magazines, including ones of them standing on ice floes, while the climate change documentary and advocacy film
An Inconvenient Truth (2006) includes an animated bear swimming. To make a statement about global warming, in 2009 a Copenhagen ice statue of a polar bear with a bronze skeleton was purposely left to melt in the sun. ==See also==