Polar Bears Are Getting Thinner and Having Fewer Cubs

Group 4: Rainer, Raffa, Tata, Bryan, and Cherie

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Background

Polar bears are animals that live in the arctic, and they hunt seals on the sea ice. Due to climate change the earth gets warmer causing the ice to melt in the following year, this can lead to polar bears having less time to hunt and storing up the fat. When these polar bears can’t find food, they get skinnier and they may not have enough energy to get enough nutrients and can cause polar bears to not produce as many cubs and the cubs do not get enough nutrition. Changes in the environment can affect all living things for example like the warmer temperature and melting ice. When animals lose their homes or food sources, they can get weaker, have fewer babies, or even disappear over time. 

Problem

A study published in Science AAAS found that polar bear populations in the Arctic have shrunk to two-thirds of their previous size in the past 30 years, not only have they shrunk in size their population also has dropped by Forty percent. That's the stunning population loss for polar bears in the arctic region

Polar bears are becoming thinner and having fewer cubs due to climate change. Melting sea ice reduces their ability to hunt seals, leading to starvation and lower body weight—on average, males weigh 45 kg less, and females 31 kg less than before. This malnutrition also affects cub survival and reproduction. From 2009 to 2015, polar bears spent 30 more days on land compared to the 1990s, where food is scarce. As a result, polar bear populations have dropped by 40% in the last 30 years. Some now enter human areas looking for food, showing how their shrinking habitat is pushing them toward extinction. 

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Theoretical Background

Evolution means living things slowly change over a very long time. Every group of animals has slight differences between individuals. For example, not all bears are exactly the same. Some are bigger, some have thicker fur, some are better at swimming. Polar bears are a great example for evaluation where their ancestors had different traits, but those with white fur, thick fat, and big paws survived best in the cold Arctic. Over thousands of years, these traits became common, and the polar bear evolved to live in icy, snowy environments.

These changes help the animals or plants survive better. This happens because of something called natural selection. That means the ones that are stronger or better suited for their environment have a better chance to stay alive, find food, and have babies. Their babies often get the same helpful traits, like being faster, blending in better, or not getting sick as easily. Over time, more and more animals or plants in that group will have these traits, and they become common.


Some traits are helpful because of things called selective pressures. These are things that make life harder, like hungry predators, freezing weather, or not enough food. These challenges push animals to change over time. If animals can’t adapt quickly enough, they might die. But if they have traits that help them survive, they can live longer and have babies that also get those helpful traits..  

Hypothesis

If climate change continues and it reduces the polar bear's hunting time. Then, polar bears are getting smaller

Proof Of Our Hyphothesis


In order to prove our hypothesis, we used a simulation instead of an experiment. Using a simulation can provide a larger amount of information and data that is not possible for some people to experiment on, such as many students.

Our simulation will include 3 agents: polar bears, ice, and temperature. The polar bear will spawn small, then they will increase a randomized (within range) amount of size every tick. At a random size, they will reproduce. The temperature will spawn at a certain window of time, to simulate fishing season, and they will wander the screen. When a fishing boat comes in contact with a cod, the simulation will check if the size of the cod is within the size threshold. If yes, the cod will be removed from the screen. After the boat catches a certain number of fish, it will despawn. The simulation will track the number of fish based on their range of sizes over time. 

Analysis and Conclusion

In conclusion, the higher the temperature is, the less ice there is. And when there is less ice the size of polar bears gets smaller. Meanwhile, the lower the temperature, the more ice and when there is more ice the polar bears get larger. This proves our hypothesis because rising temperatures from climate change can affect the size of polar bears, making them smaller.

Suggestion for our next work

Solutions to combat global warming such as saving energy at home, using less vehicles, reusing, reducing, and recycling products, and switching to solar energy and an electric car could help slow down rising temperatures in the Arctic, which helps to avoid the polar bears reducing in size as higher temperatures lead to less ice, which contributes to the decrease of size in polar bears.