Experts examined the tissues of the bear. The man was physically weak and probably old.

What happened

Summer Miomik, 24, and her son, Clyde Ongtowasruk, died on January 17 in the coastal town of Wales, the westernmost city on the North American mainland. When did they both leave school A polar bear attacked them in the middle of the street. Due to a strong blizzard, Miomik did not notice him in time. School staff tried to stop the animal by hitting it with shovels, but the bear also attacked them, forcing them to retreat to the school full of students. The school was locked up until a villager came with a gun and shot the polar bear. Unfortunately, the woman and child were already dead.

Attacks by polar bears on humans are extremely rare. The last case in the US was in 1993 and the last fatal case was in Point Ley, Alaska in 1990.

Why did the bear attack?

From the Alaska Department of Wildlife, Dr. Kimberly Beckman conducted a study of tissue samples from a dead polar bear to learn more about why the animal behaved so aggressively. There was such speculation in the media that The bear could have had a brain-altering illness such as rabies, toxoplasmosis, plague, or bird flu.. But the tests did not detect any pathogens. Therefore, the main factors that most likely affected the animal were: gender and physical condition.

In a 2017 study published in the Wildlife Society Bulletin, scientists analyzed data from 73 polar bear attacks between 1870 and 2014 in Canada, Greenland, Norway and the United States. They found this “Adult male polar bears experiencing nutritional stress are likely to pose a threat to human safety”. The latest attack is consistent with these findings.

The investigation “has no definitive explanation for why the bear is in bad shape, but it’s possible that human-induced climate change played a role.

The loss of sea ice means polar bears have less access to their primary prey, such as seals. This means that they can become increasingly worse off, especially when they are on land.
says Lindsay Mangipan of the U.S. Fisheries Service’s Alaska Polar Bear Conservation Program.

Climate change may also increase the risk of attacks elsewhere. Lindsay Mangipan explains that historically polar bears spend most of their time on sea ice, so human encounters are minimal. As the open water season gets longer due to increased melting, bears stay on land longer in some areas, increasing the likelihood of human-bear interaction.