Discovery
For years, people reported seeing strange looking bears in the Arctic. In 2010, an Inuit man came across one of the bears and scientists were intrigued. It looked like a hybrid bear. A combination of a polar bear and something else. They wanted to do some research to find out how this bear came to be. Scientists are still struggling to understand new ‘Pizzly Bear’ Creature. The Inuit man’s name is David Kuptana. He lives on Victoria Island. The bear was discovered in the frozen Canadian North along the coast of the Arctic Circle. The temperature there is typically below 0.
The Inuit People
David was born in an igloo in a small coastal community called Ulukhaktok. Only a few hundred people are living in the area. The community is home to the northernmost golf course in the world. This far north, groceries are costly because it can be challenging to get them. Because of the cost, most people live off the land.
Hunting Polar Bears
The Inuit people hunt polar bears. When the Arctic gets warmer, polar bears tend to spend more time on the land. This is because there is less ice in the water for them to stand on. This puts them in a human’s way to be hunted. Polar bears are great for their meat. The Inuit people use their fur for boots and pants. Since polar bears are vulnerable to extinction, new laws have been placed regarding hunting; however, the Inuit hunters till
April 2010
In April 2010, David found a creature that he had never seen before. He and his wife set out on their snowmobile and drove across the sea ice to a cabin on the island. They were planning to stay there while they hunted. When they got there, they found something that surprised them. Someone had broken into the cabin looking for food. It didn’t take long for David to realized that it was a bear. David and his wife decided to head to a different cabin. This one was also ransacked, and there were fresh bear tracks in the snow. Even more strange was the mattress was pulled off the bed and dragged outside. This was something David had never seen bears do. He went from cabin to cabin, and all five were ransacked. It was when he got to the sixth cabin that he found something incredible.
The Bear
In the sixth cabin, David spotted a bear, but it wasn’t a polar bear. This bear was blonde with dark paws and dark eyes. When it ran, David chased it. He thought that it was a grizzly and he had never seen one before. He was scared because he had never seen a creature like it. When he caught up to the bear, she shot it and killed it. He took it to the local government officer in town who told him that it wasn’t a grizzly bear. It also wasn’t a polar bear. He believed it to be a hybrid. The officer took samples of the bear’s DNA to be tested. It didn’t take long for the officer to find out that this wasn’t the only bear of its kind. There were 20 bears born in captivity just like it. Two of them were in Germany’s Osnabruck zoo. Their names are Tips and Taps. They are called Pizzly bears.
The First Pizzly
In 2006, a hunter found the first confirmed Pizzly bear on Banks Island, Northern Territories, Canada. There had been stories of these strange looking bears, but the DNA wasn’t tested until 2006. When they found the hybrid, they didn’t think much of it at first. When the third confirmed hybrid was discovered in 2016 by a hunter in Arviat, Canada. They were sure that this breed was created due to climate change and interbreeding. As the climate warmed and the Arctic ice melted, there weren’t as many polar bears out. This meant that they had to mate with other species of bear.
The Pizzly
This bear gets his features from both of his parents. Their heads aren’t sleek, and they aren’t boxy. They have long claws and hairy feet. The Pizzly’s fur is partially hollow depending where it is on the body. These characteristics make it difficult for this bear to adapt to climate change.
The DNA Is In
When the DNA test came back, it revealed that the bear’s mother was
The First Bear
A group of scientists managed to trace the species back to one female polar bear in 2017. They called her, Bear 10960. It took a lot of DNA testing to figure this out. They determined that the female mated with two different polar bears and one of them twice. She had three litters. Scientists believe that she mated with a grizzly because there were no polar bears around.
More Hybrids?
Only time will tell how many more species of hybrid animals we will find due to climate change. As climate change changes the way that animals hunt and breed, we might see this happening more often.
