More Polar Bears Going Hungry What Can We Do? »

Posted By Newperson 11 months ago in Science & Technology

Polar bear cub Wilbaer and his mother Corinna take a bath during Wilbaer's first outing on April 16, 2008 at the Wilhelma zoo in Stuttgart, southern Germany. Wilbaer was born on December 10, 2007 at the zoo and is brought up by his mother, contrary to Berlin's world famous polar bear Knut and Nuremberg's Flocke. AFP PHOTO DDP/MICHAEL LATZ GERMANY OUT (Photo credit should read MICHAEL LATZ/AFP/Getty Images)

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Warmer temperatures and earlier melting of sea ice are causing polar bears to go hungry. The number of undernourished bears has tripled in a 20-year period.

This undated photo provided by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service shows a sow polar bear resting...
This undated photo provided by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service shows a sow polar bear resting with her cubs on the pack ice in the Beaufort Sea in northern Alaska. Warmer temperatures and earlier melting of sea ice are causing polar bears to go hungry. The number of undernourished bears has tripled in a 20-year period.
(Steve Amstrup/U.S. Fish and Wild Life Service/AP Photo)
More PhotosSeth Cherry of the University of Alberta, Canada, and colleagues monitored the health of polar bears in the ice-covered Beaufort Sea region of the Arctic during April and May in 1985, 1986, 2005 and 2006.

They immobilised the bears using tranquilliser darts and measured the ratio of urea to creatinine in their blood. A low ratio means that nitrogenous waste material is being recycled within the body and indicates the animal is fasting - a state which usually only occurs temporarily in males during the spring breeding season.