Marathon on the ice

The polar bear’s sense of smell is so good that it can smell a seal resting on the ice up to 20 km away!

It may well be that you can run from a polar bear on a 1,500 meter. But in the Arctic – surrounded only by ice, ice and ice again – do not just run fast. You also need to be in extremely good shape to shake a polar bear off you.

Naturama’s big polar bear could easily snatch a marathon when it lived in Greenland. A marathon every day, mind you. It moved an average of 40 km a day in its perpetual search for seals. And it was 40 kilometers both by sea and by land.

The polar bear at Naturama is a magnificent specimen. It is almost 3 meters long and would weigh about 800 kg live. The skin comes from a polar bear that was shot in Greenland. But Naturama’s conservator had to go all the way to the United States to make a model – a mannequin – that could match the big skin.

Naturama has 4 polar bears, of which 3 can be seen in the museum’s exhibitions.