You know when you haven’t gotten laid in a while, so you lower your standards (which were’t even that high to begin with), just so you can get some tang?
This is sort of like that, but replace “sex slump” with “global warming-induced sex slump” and “you” with “bears”
Grizzly bears are fucking polar bears now.
A hunter recently bagged the mutant spawn, and now scientists fear they will take over the Arctic.
“It looks like a polar bear but…it’s got brown paws and big claws like a grizzly. And the shape of a grizzly head,” [said Didji] Ishalook, …who lives in Arviat, [in the Candadian Arctic]
While previously known to occur, the intermingling was thought to be rare. However, it’s becoming increasingly more common as the climate changes.
Less ice makes it harder for the bears to hunt, [Dave Garshelis, a research scientist with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources] said, pushing them onto land farther south. At the same time, the warming climate has allowed grizzly bears to move farther north, creating more opportunities for the genetically similar polar bears and grizzlies to cross paths.
But warm weather is perfect for fucking (ever had sex after hanging out all night on a rooftop bar? It’s fantastic). Most of the time, it is the male grizzly screwing the female polar bear. Lady grizzly bears tend not to venture north enough to bang polar bear dudes.
Yet, fun as the fucking is, scientists are worried this kind of interbreeding could spell doom for the polar bear species. Via The Washington Post:
Polar bears are getting the short end of the stick in this relationship, not “gaining any genetic diversity,” said Geoff York, who led research on polar bears at the World Wildlife Fund for almost a decade before joining Amstrup at PBI.
Andrew Derocher, a professor of biological studies at the University of Alberta, has spent three decades studying bears throughout the Arctic. He, too, has a sobering view about where the hybridization is heading.
“I hate to say it, but from a genetic perspective, it’s quite likely grizzly bears will eat polar bears up, genetically,” he told me. And he says the changes are already at play.
That’s kind of a bummer, but hey, you gotta break a few eggs to make super bears.