Polar Man

Researcher BJ Kirschoffer. Courtesy: Polar Bears International

By Michael Schulder, CNN Senior Executive Producer.

That icicle hanging beneath BJ Kirschhoffer’s nose is exactly what you think it is. Polar Bear researchers officially call them snotsicles. And it’s what you get when it’s about 50 below zero and you’re outside for eight hours straight. The mission is to record what few have ever witnessed: hibernating Polar Bears emerging from their dens with their cubs. Human beings are not made to survive in 50 below zero. Neither are video cameras. But the ingenuity of BJ Kirschhoffer, Director of Field Operations for Polar Bears International, and the research team at Brigham Young University, helped capture one of the most remarkable scenes you’ll ever see in the natural world. You can view it exclusively on CNN by clicking to the rest of this story.

Researcher crawling into den - after the bears left. Courtesy: Polar Bears International

TALES FROM THE CRYPT

When someone begins a sentence with the words: “Most dens I’ve been in …” you know you’re talking to a Polar Bear expert. The expert, in this case, is Tom Smith of Brigham Young. He describes Polar Bears as “highly honed seal killing machines” whose dens are like “crypts,” as small as three feet tall, four feet wide, and five feet long. This for an animal that is a couple of feet taller and as much as three times heavier than Shaquille O’Neal.

The condensation from the Polar Bear’s body heat and breathing quickly freezes, encapsulating the interior of the den in a solid layer of ice. Professor Smith and his fellow researchers have never found evidence of a breathing hole or any other fresh air source in any den. How these animals survive the carbon monoxide levels that must exist in their dens is a complete mystery. Professor Smith does not have claustrophobia, but, he says, “I’d be psychologically damaged after spending an hour or two inside a Polar Bear den.”

A MOTHER’S WORK

Only pregnant Polar Bears hibernate. They gorge themselves on more than a hundred pounds of seal fat during the fall, use their powerful paws and claws to dig their den up to three feet deep in the snow around the end of October, give birth around the first of the year, and emerge with their one or two or three cubs generally in March. We’ll get to why these giant creatures who’ve been roaming the tundra for 200-thousand years are suddenly threatened, and the rare video shot just weeks ago. But first, something that’s rarely been mentioned in public. The medical value of Polar Bears.

POLAR BEAR PHARMACEUTICALS, INC.

When Harvard Physicians Eric Chivian and Aaron Bernstein look at Polar Bears, they see possible cures for osteoporosis, diabetes, and kidney failure. They describe the potential in their fascinating new book “Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity.”

Dr. Chivian points out that humans would lose about a third of their bone after remaining immobile for five months. Yet denning Polar Bears, who, like us, are mammals, don’t lose any bone mass after their long, still, yearly hibernation. So every elderly person, every post-menopausal woman, anyone at all who’s at risk of osteoporosis, may have a personal stake in the survival of Polar Bears. How do the Polar Bears do it? According to Dr. Chivian: “Denning bears have compounds in their blood streams that inhibit the break down of bone associated with immobility and that may someday allow us to effectively treat, and perhaps even prevent, this largely untreatable disease.” But they must be studied in the wild.

Polar Bears “don’t eat, drink, defecate or urinate during those five months in their dens,” marvels Dr. Chivian. And yet they don’t starve, don’t become dehydrated, don’t suffer any problems from not defecating, and don’t become ill despite not urinating. If we are unable to rid ourselves of urinary wastes, after a few days, we die.”

Researcher Tom Smith in the Arctic. Courtesy: Polar Bears International.

And finally, as we’ve mentioned, when those pregnant Polar Bears prepare to hibernate, they gorge themselves on seal blubber. Brigham Young’s Professor Tom Smith notes that Polar Bear newborns weigh about one pound. They emerge after three months of weighing about 30 pounds because of the high fat content of their mothers milk. Whole cow’s milk in the grocery store is 3 percent fat. A Polar Bear mother’s milk is 30 percent fat. And yet, Polar Bears do not get diabetes. Dr. Bernstein, of Harvard: “Obesity related type II diabetes is essentially epidemic in the U.S., afflicting more than 16 million Americans….If Polar Bears go extinct, we may lose with them vital clues about how to combat this disease.”

THE ELEPHANT IN THE DEN

It was Harvard’s Drs. Chivian and Bernstein who led us to U.S. Geological Survey’s Steve Amstrup, one of the godfathers of Polar Bear Research in the U.S., who, in turn, led us to his collaborators on the ongoing Polar Bear den study, which leads us to the Elephant in the Den – the key subject we haven’t yet explored here. The impact of climate change on the survival of Polar Bears.

What scientists know for sure is that climate change has been reducing the amount of solid arctic sea ice that has always been the Polar Bears’ stomping grounds, making it more difficult for them to hunt for seals and forcing many pregnant Polar Bears to build their dens on land – on the tundra — closer to human populations and Alaska’s oil drilling industry and infrastructure. Amstrup, Smith and their collaborators at The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and Polar Bears International are spending their winters in a 50-below zero climate to see whether proximity to people affects the denning habits and survival abilities of Polar Bear adults and cubs. Nobody knows why this cub froze to death just outside its mother’s den, but it’s a reminder of how fragile these powerful creatures can be before they grow up.

A frozen Polar Bear cub. Courtesy: Polar Bears International

THE RISING

Now that you have the background, the video you’re about to see will be all the more awesome. Before you click it, let us orient you. Beneath that snow drift, on a landscape BYU grad student Rusty Robinson describes as “unforgiving beauty” is a Polar Bear mom and at least one of her cubs. After five months, with no space to move around, no fresh air to breath, and confined to a den encapsulated by a solid sheet of ice, a black nose emerges. Given the depth of packed snow and ice it must break through, it may be the strongest nose on earth. The rest needs no explanation.