Brown fur, flat back: This combination is not usually found in polar bears or grizzly bears. Unless the two species mate.
When polar bears reproduce with grizzly bears, the result is a cross with the name “pizzly bear” or “grolar bear”. There could be more of these hybrids in the Arctic in the future. According to Business Insider, climate change is to blame. “We have known about pizzlies for some time, but their occurrence could become more common as the Arctic warms up,” biologist Larisa DeSantis told the portal.
The first pizzly was discovered in 2006, according to the report, when a hunter in northern Canada killed a bear that showed characteristics of both species: white fur like that of a polar bear, and brown spots, a hunched back and long claws, which is characteristic of Grizzly bear is. According to the Associated Press, a DNA test confirmed that it was a cross.
Polar bears and grizzly bears can create mixed forms of “pizzly bears”
Since then, pizza bears have been spotted more frequently. In 2017, for example, a study in the specialist magazine Arctic documented eight pizzlies that arose from the pairing of a female polar bear with two different male grizzlies. Biologist DeSantis said that the two bear species could come together because grizzly bears orient themselves north due to the constant rise in temperature.
At the same time, polar bears are also opening up other areas: “Polar bears have to look increasingly for other sources of food when hunting seals from the sea ice becomes untenable,” Business Insider quotes the biologist. Seals make up a large part of the polar bear diet. But as the ice in the Arctic is receding, hunting becomes more difficult from there. “Polar bears are likely to experience increasingly stressful conditions and higher mortality rates,” wrote researchers on the subject in Science in 2018.
Mixed forms such as “pizzly bears” are often weaker
Larisa DeSantis told Business Insider about polar bears and grizzly bears that had been spotted together near whale cadavers, prompting them to “opportunistically mate”. Since the two species only diverged between 500,000 and 600,000 years ago, their offspring are also able to produce offspring. However, it is not yet clear how well the mixed race survived.
“Most of the time, the hybrids are no stronger than either species,” said DeSantis. Because individual species are better adapted to the conditions in their respective habitat. Nevertheless, there are cases in which mixed race are stronger, “especially when the environment deviates from what it once was.” (Ial)
