Changing habitat

(Image credit: Hansruedi Weyrich)As the climate has changed, polar bears have shifted their diets in response, several new papers published in 2013 showed.

Melting sea ice

(Image credit: Evgeny Kovalev spb | Shutterstock)Declines in sea ice have meant that polar bears in the western Hudson Bay cannot hunt their main prey for longer stretches of the year.

Preferred prey

(Image credit: ©AMNH/R. Rockwell)Historically, polar bears have mainly hunted for seals in gaps in the sea ice.

Snow geese

(Image credit: Igor Kovalenko | Shutterstock.com)When the sea ice melts in summer, polar bears come ashore. Then they also eat land-based foods such as snow geese.

Scat-sniffing dog

(Image credit: ©AMNH/R. Rockwell)To see how climate change had affected polar bear diet, Linda Gormezano, a researcher at the American Museum of Natural History, and her colleagues, used a Dutch Shepard dog named Quinoa to find polar bear scat.

Ice dog

(Image credit: ©AMNH/L. Gormezano)The dog found many piles of scat, and the team analyzed the contents.Here, quinoa sniffs for scat on an ice flow.

New diet

(Image credit: WCS)Compared to the 1960s, the polar bear diet had changed. They now prey upon caribou, whose populations have boomed in the area

Caribou carcass

(Image credit: ©AMNH/R. Rockwell)Here, a polar bear with a caribou carcass.

Goose eggs

(Image credit: Dragon_Fang | Shutterstock.com)Because the polar bears come ashore earlier, they are now on land when lesser snow geese are nesting, and now eat goose eggs as well.