Heartwarming rarity cuts through the cold: polar bear mom ‘adopts’ baby cub

As researchers watched polar bears making their way towards Churchill in mid-November, they took note that the mother, who they had observed with a single cub in the spring, had added a second to her travelling party.

It’s just the 13th known case of a polar bear adoption in the western Hudson Bay subpopulation.

“I had a lot of mixed feelings…. It gives you a lot of hope that maybe polar bears are looking out for each other out there,” said Alysa McCall, director of conservation outreach and staff scientist at Polar Bears International.

The five-year-old mother was wearing a GPS-tracking collar scientists fitted her with with in the spring; her cub was also tagged. The second young cub with them last month was not wearing a tag.

“It is unusual. We don’t really know why it happens, or how often, but we know it doesn’t happen often at all,” said McCall.

She said the survival rate of cubs is about 50 per cent, and if that cub doesn’t have a mom “it has almost no chance.”

The ursine adoption, she said, “gives it a shot to make it to adulthood.” Both cubs are just under a year old.

“Of course, it’s balanced with the concern of what happened with the biological mom,” McCall said. “We’ll never know that, probably.”

Environment and Climate Change Canada polar bear researcher Evan Richardson said his team has studied about 4,600 bears and “hundreds and hundreds of litters.”

Researchers took a genetic sample of the adopted cub and are waiting on a match.

“The bears need all the help they can get these days with climate change,” said Richardson. “They are maternally charged and such good mothers. “They can’t leave a cub crying in the tundra, so they pick them up and take them along with them.”

The mother’s movement can be found on Polar Bears International’s tracker. Her ID is X33991.

fpcity@freepress.mb.ca