A Polar Bear’s Home Range

Unlike other large carnivores, polar bears don’t have territories, partly because their sea ice habitat is always moving and seasonally changing, expanding in winter and retreating in summer.

Polar bears in regions with less sea ice and fewer seals may travel farther and have longer fasting periods.

When a young polar bear grows up, it may travel more than 1,000 kilometers to set up a home range apart from its mother's, although this remains a scarcely studied topic, because tagging and tracking a quickly maturing animal is tricky.

Scientists believe that most polar bears limit travel to home ranges of a few hundred miles. However, they know of one satellite-tracked female that trekked 4,796 kilometers —from Alaska's Prudhoe Bay to Greenland to Canada's Ellesmere Island and back to Greenland.