Polar News and Notes Animals

Life in the Antarctic depends on the lowest members of the global food chain - krill. This would be reason enough for scientists to investigate the comings and goings of the small crustaceans. But researchers also wanted to know why trillions of krill formed swarms so vast the superswarms can be seen from the air. […]

 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 […]

Celebrate the International Polar Week with a real-time live event with PolarTREC teacher, Cristina Galvan and the University of Wyoming scientists led by Dr. Merav Ben-David. The team is currently studying polar bear response to sea ice loss in the Arctic Ocean.
This event is free, open to the public, and hosted by ARCUS through the PolarTREC […]

An Antarctic species whose response to climate warming has been documented in recent decades gives researchers cause for concern today. As sea ice shrinks, the emperor penguin colony on Terre Adelie could decline from about 3,000 breeding pairs to 400 by the end of the century.
One colony around the French research station in Terre Adelie […]

If we’re looking for a species-rich environment, the place to go may be underfoot, according to an article in the National Science Foundation’s online Discoveries page.
Biologist Diana Wall of Colorado State University in Fort Collins is quoted as saying, “The unseen, and mostly underappreciated, realm beneath us is teeming with life. Earth is really brown […]