I knew they were big bears but not TWICE A HUMAN size! I didn’t even google this image for the polar bear I wanted to see how big a black bear is.
guess I’m never going to Antarctica!
It is not just that they are enormous and strong. Its that they will actively hunt you for food unlike most brown or black bears.
I think they are fairly unique among the animal kingdom for being willing to chance attacking a human. Most other predators don’t find the risk of not knowing exactly how it would go to be worth it.
There is a reason that a lot of the people that you see that live or spend a lot of time in the parts of the world that Polar Bears live in don’t often go outside without high caliber weapons.
If it’s brown lay down
If it’s black fight back
If it’s white say goodnightThere’s a reason why they say that
There’s reasons in rural communities in Canada that polar bears frequent that it is custom to keep your car doors unlocked at all times, so if someone walking runs into a polar bear they can dive into a random car for safety.
Big bastards best stay away lest they suffer double nipple twisters.
YSK bears have three pairs of nipples, better bring the sextuple twist or you’ll be a bear stain
I have great bright strength and practically prehensile toes. That last nipple might be a deal breaker though.
I guess there’s a good reason the movie, The Edge, was set in Alaska instead of Antarctica.
They’re all talk though.
Says someone who’s never encountered a polar bear before.
If it’s white, you can win that fight.
Says someone who’s never encountered a polar bear before.
Cave bears used to make polar bears look small.
Santa Barbara zoo?
They used to have some at my local zoo when I was a kid. Now knowing this, I’d like to see one in person again. Obviously to a kid they looked fucking huge, but I’d like to see one in person as an adult now knowing this. It’s definitely better that my zoo decided they didn’t have a big enough enclosure and stopped getting polar bears, but it kinda sucks too.
It’s ok, he has a contact with the girl.
They’re northern Hemisphere, not Antarctica. We have them in our province (Manitoba), but yes they’re big. On average tho not quite as big as the painting there shows.
This would be a female bear, as she is with her cubs. Polar bears are actually the second most sexually dimorphic mammal. Consequently males are vastly bigger than females.
The most sexually dimorphic? The elephant seal. Those dudes are immense.
Edit: this, I read on wikipedia a couple of years ago. The information is no longer there but the fact that polar bears and elephant seals are among the most dimorphic mammals remains. The precise ranking is perhaps a little more obscure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_bear
If one of the average sized ones rises up in front of you and roars, I bet it would look just as big as that painting.
Can anyone confirm? Probably not.
Yup, Not many people get the opportunity to see one up close and live to tell about it, unless there’s something REALLY solid in between them. Like that Nat Geo guy in the cage. https://youtu.be/U-S4NbX5IYE They’re absolutely terrifying up close…
They don’t typically roar tho, unless they’re fighting or f…uh screwing. And they’re not scared of anything.
I knew it! Seeing them in a Zoo many years back I got the impression they were pretty big but not THAT massive.
I think the painting shows the largest they’ve found, not the norm. It’s like showing Robert Wadlow (The tallest guy in the world at 8 ft 11.1 in (2.72 m) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Wadlow) to show the size of humans. Yes we can get that large, but it’s an extreme example.
Just let it happen. If someone is looking at my stat sheet Im not going to complain if they say I can run 100 meters as fast as Bolt did in the Olympics. *limps to the kitchen…
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Arctus = “Bear”, Anti = “against” in ancient Greek, or “opposite” in modern meaning.
Arctic = bears are here
Anti-arctic = opposite bears, or “no bears”.
Has absolutely nothing to do with actual bears though.
The name comes from the constellation Ursa Major, which in Greek was Arktos Megale. Both mean the Great Bear.
Basically it just means north and not north because the Ursa Major constellation has the North Star in it.
It does just kinda work out that bears are in the northern hemisphere and not the southern hemisphere. There’s only one bear native to the southern hemisphere, the Spectacled Bear native to the Andes mountain in South America. There are no bears native to Africa or Oceania at all.
Koala bear,
Check mate athiests
/s
In German Baerbel is a woman’s name. And you say Baer if you mean beaver. The more you know. 🤷♀️
Beaver is also a slang term for female genitalia in English
yeah if you put bears on antarctica they mutually annihilate
This has come up before on lemmy.
Wouldn’t a better translation given the context be something like the place opposite to the place where there are bears? It’s not like the Greeks somehow intuited that there was such a place and that there would be no bears there.
It’s more of a translation-based mnemonic device, really
It’s the place opposite /ursa major/ (the great bear constellation, in the northern sky.) The name has nothing to do with actual bears (that’s just good luck.)
You fell for the bait.
But I learned so it’s fine
I saw this before somewhere and a commenter said they didn’t actually know if there were bears or not in these places when they named them. This had more to do with the constellation Ursa (bear) major/minor (north star). But works out to being a nice mnemonic.
So did the Greeks traverse the whole planet? Like the idea isn’t too far fetched but it’s just weird to think about Mediterraneans traveling to the arctics
Lol.
I’ve studied bears for a while now. There’s actually a proven strategy for fighting polar bears. First you dodge to the left, then jump as high as you can and punch them in the eye. By the time they realize what’s happened, it’ll all be over and you’ll be opening your eyes, hoping you prayed to the right god
You’re finally awake !
you gotta nail the timing or else your shouryuu reppa misses
There’s gonna be a fatality one way or another, but probably one way in particular
Seems sound
Good news, Antarctica is still polar bear free ;)
That is what the name means, afterall.
Why are people downvoting this?
Because the name actually doesn’t have anything to do with real bears.
It was directional about the constellation Ursa Major (which in Greek is Arktos Megale).
There’s also Ursa Minor which is the little bear constellation, that contains the north star and is a great navigational tool.
Arctic and Antarctic basically just mean north and south.
Would they have called that constellation Ursa Major if not for the presence of bears in that direction? Maybe the constellation naming was like, “don’t go too far towards bear country if you don’t want to deal with bears that think of humans as food.” “Bears this way. Bears ahead.”
There were bears all over Europe. They were a huge part of Greek and Roman mythology. They didn’t know anything about polar bears at the time.
Bears have been important in many cultures, and Ursa Major is depicted as a bear in many non-Greek cultures as well, going back to prehistory.
Many North American indigenous tribes depict it as a bear, long before European contact. Same with pre-Islamic Arabian cultures.
It was named because the constellation looks like a bear, not because it pointed to where bears were. Even Native Americans called that constellation a bear, and they had bears south of them.
because it’s not directly true, Antarctica means “land opposite the place below the bear-shaped constellations”, not “land without bears”.
Because it actually means “The opposite side from the bear place”
Hmm… How would you like to see a polar bear from below?
😉
Is this question a furry thing?
Verry.
Well then I think it would be too much for me to bear…
Eh? Eh?
Reality is often “controversial” these days.
Sometimes downright unbearable
I’d rather the bear than Shoggoths, Elder Things, or possibly a Great Old One!
Polar bears are also pretty big.
If it’s black, fight back. If it’s brown, lay down. If it’s white, say good night.
Yeah, if one ever gets that unlucky you just have to hope they make it quick.
polar bears: “i just love kidding”
The “say” makes it three syllables while the others are two so it doesn’t flow
“if it’s white, good night” flows better and it’s more to the point since it’s shorter anyway
