Animals and Habitats: Supplemental Guide 2A | Animals of the Arctic Habitat 41to steer. They swim very fast, so they catch plenty of tasty fi sh.
Thankfully, they don’t eat rats!
Show image 2A-12: Polar bear
Here comes a polar bear! Look out!
The polar bear is perhaps the best known of all the animals
living around the Arctic Ocean. These astonishing animals have
adapted incredibly well to the harsh, Arctic habitat.
Polar bears are the largest bears in the world. Male polar bears
weigh up to 1700 pounds—that’s probably heavier than everyone
in your class put together, including your teacher. And polar bears
grow up to ten feet from head to toe. Yikes!
Polar bears are covered with a heavy coat made up of two
layers of fur, and they have a layer of blubber under their skin.
Their ears and tails are very small so that not too much of their
bodies are exposed to the cold weather.^8 It’s a good thing they
have all that fur and blubber and sharp claws, because polar bears
spend most of their life living on sea ice, chunks of ice that fl oat
in the Arctic Ocean. Sometimes polar bears take a dip in the icy
Arctic water to swim from one chunk of ice to another, and they
have webbed paws, sort of like a duck’s feet, to help them swim.
They use those mighty paws to hunt their favorite food—seals.
Like all living things, polar bears need water to survive, and they
get that water from melted snow and ice.
Show image 2A-13: Polar bear with cub
Even though adult polar bears spend most of their time living
on sea ice, polar bear babies, or cubs, are born on land. Their
mothers, female polar bears, burrow in the snow to make a den.^9
They will then hide in the den while they have their babies. They
stay in the dens with their young all winter, and in the spring they
fi nally come out. The cubs stay with their mothers for almost two
years to learn hunting and survival skills before leaving home.8 What does exposed mean?
9 That means they dig a hole in the
snow to make a shelter.