Aboard a ship in the Svalbard archipelago in the Arctic Ocean, a tourist from Great Britain spotted a swimming polar bear with a cub on her back. Intrigued by the sight, the tourist got in touch with the Norwegian Polar Institute to ask about the mother bear’s behavior.  

According to an article in the BBC Earth News, the Norwegian Polar Institute’s Jon Aars could not remember hearing about such behavior. He asked other scientists who were studying the polar bear and discovered that some had observed the behavior but not frequently.

The behavior would be practiced when bears are out in the water swimming between ice floes so it might not be easily observed.

In an article for Polar Biology, Aars points out that cubs have little insulating fat and do not develop brown fat stores until they reach adulthood. Their coats lose much of their insulating properties in water. Riding on their mother’s back and staying out of the icy ocean waters could mean survival for cubs whose mothers must swim in open water to reach floating ice.

The cub seen and photographed by the tourist was seven months old. The mother bear had been tagged by researchers and is reported to be about 19 years old.

There are advantages for the swimming mother bear in packing the cub on her back: She can swim faster than her cubs and so doesn’t lose time and energy in the cold water if the cubs are in the water.

 Professor Andrew Derocher of the University of Alberta in Canada suggests asking the Inuit about the swimming behavior. He says: “It would be interesting to hear if Inuit have seen this behaviour. I’m always very impressed that our observations match what local people have seen before, but they don’t tell you about them unless you ask.”

Western scientists’ growing interest in tapping the observations and experiences of indigenous people in the Arctic is the subject of the article Fruitful Collaboration: Western Science and Native Ways of Knowing in the October 2009 issue of Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears. Researchers who are studying caribou herds, seal populations, and other animals that provide subsistence in the polar regions report on ways they are seeking the knowledge of Native communities. They have found that communication is impeded by the different ways Western science and Native ways of knowing are practiced, but, as the Canadian researcher is quoted above, it sometimes is just a matter of asking.