Latest Attenborough BS–”Starving Polar Eating Poor Belugas”–Never Happened Before, He Lies

By Paul Homewood

h/t AC Osborn

Attenborough is on the march again tonight, with his latest load of BS:

A polar bear bravely leaped into a pod of beluga whales in a desperate bid to avoid starvation.

Sir David Attenborough’s Seven Worlds One Planet episode looks at the animals’ remarkable survival strategy in Hudson Bay, Canada.

Presenter Sir David says the country is ‘warming faster than any other country on earth.’

Warming temperatures are affecting sea ice, something polar bears depend upon for their hunting.

To combat this, one bear was seen waiting poised on rocks above.

It flung itself off and onto a passing whale below before taking the kill back to shore.

Sir David described this feat of perfect timing ‘a remarkable strategy for survival’.

Warming temperatures are melting sea ice, something polar bears depend upon for their hunting

As the footage of the attack is played, Sir David says: ‘One small group of bears has found an ingenious way of surviving the lean summer months.

‘This extraordinary behaviour has only been recorded here, in this remote corner of North America, and only in the last few years.’

He goes on to say: ‘We continue to transform our planet and the seasons are becoming less predictable. Will the wildlife of North America be able to adapt?’

The programme, which will air on BBC One on Sunday, looks at North America.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7741099/Polar-bear-dives-pod-beluga-whales-David-Attenboroughs-Seven-Worlds-One-Planet

Just because David Attenborough’s cameraman has not seen this happen before, it does not mean it has not ever happened. These two scientists, for instance, saw exactly the same thing going on in the 1980s, off Somerset Island in the high Arctic.

Abstract

Somerset Island. All of the narwhals and two of the belugas had been attacked and partially eaten by polar bears. At Cunningham Inlet, where belugas concentrate in large numbers, we have noted ten strandings over the period 1980-88, without bear predation on these occasions. One bear, hunting from an ice floe in deep water at Cunningham Inlet, killed two sub-adult belugas in July 1985. Belugas seem to exhibit curiosity towards swimming polar bears that might serve to drive bears out of the area and reduce the risk of predation. The potential large summer food resource for bears represented by odontocete whales in the High Arctic Archipelago seems to be underutilized. The timing and location of beluga concentrations are known and dates of probable strandings are somewhat predictable, which might allow us to assess the extent of bear predation on whales in the future

https://core.ac.uk/display/100901921

Note that this kill took place in the summer, just as Attenborough’s latest incident was. And there certainly should not have been a “shortage of sea ice”, given the much higher latitude at Somerset Island and the fact the sea ice was more extensive in the 1980s.

Smith and Sjare go on to detail the attacks:

The authors go on to suggest that whale attacks of this sort might be a “practised learned behaviour”, something which is known to exist among brown bears. In other words, it is not necessarily a common trait amongst polar bears.

And as Susan Crockford correctly points out, the polar bear in the film certainly does not look starving!

It is also worth noting that the comments on the Mail article are nearly all scathing of Attenborough’s latest rubbish.