# Could polar bears survive in Antarctica? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 23, 2020, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-polar-bears-survive-in-antarctica/848411 "2020-02-23T22:44:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![MarvinKitFox](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ba0ec/32.png) [@MarvinKitFox](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MarvinKitFox)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2020, 6:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-polar-bears-survive-in-antarctica/848411/61 "2020-02-27T06:01:43Z")
> [@Pleonast](#): > > It just occurred to me to wonder why polar bears don’t inhabit Europe. Yes they do. There are _frequent_ reports of Polar bears in Russia. . . . . . . Yes, Russia is in Europe! ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2020, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-polar-bears-survive-in-antarctica/848411/62 "2020-02-27T22:47:02Z")
> [@EmbarrassingDad](#): > > As the bears move in to the Emperor colony, the penguins aren’t stupid. They start moving away, abandoning their eggs. The bears don’t care about the adults anyway. They want the rich, fatty eggs. As the bears move forward through the months they transition from eggs to hatchlings and chicks. The bears will care about eating the adults much more than the eggs. Bears prefer a fat-rich diet, and when seals are abundant will eat just the skin and blubber and leave the red meat. Adult penguins have a thick layer of fat below the skin for insulation. An adult penguin may contain 20-30 pounds of fat. Although the yolk of the egg is 30% fat, it’s not very big and the egg will only contain 2-3 ounces of fat. The bears will preferentially eat adults as long as they are available. They will only eat the eggs as a snack or when all the adults have fled. > [@](#): > > What is the breeding lifespan of an Emperor Penquin? Emperor Penguins begin breeding at an age of 3 to 6 years, and average life span is around 20 years, although they can probably live to 50 years. > [@](#): > > I could see the bears wiping out the Emperors in less than a decade. Let’s do some simplified calculations. The largest Emperor colonies include about 20,000 pairs, or 40,000 adults (although only one is usually ashore at the same time). Figuring an average weight of 60 pounds, this comes to 2,400,000 pounds of penguin, of which 30% is fat (at the start of the breeding season). That gives 720,000 pounds of fat. A polar bear needs about 2 kg, or 4.4 pounds, of fat per day to survive, or 1600 pounds per year. If we take your figure of 5 bears from the OP, that’s 8,000 pounds of fat per year. Based on this, it would take five bears _90 years_ to eat their way through a large colony of Emperor Penguins. Of course, these calculations are just for illustrative purposes. This doesn’t take into account breeding by the birds or the bears. The bears will disrupt breeding by the penguins, and will have good breeding conditions themselves, and so will increase relative to the penguins. But this is for a single colony. The total population of Emperors is much larger than this, and it is spread across an entire continent. I think these calculations support my initial estimate that it would take an initial introduction of five bears to Antarctica several centuries before they could entirely wipe out Emperor Penguins. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2020, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-polar-bears-survive-in-antarctica/848411/63 "2020-02-28T00:09:23Z")
> [@MarvinKitFox](#): > > Yes they do. > There are _frequent_ reports of Polar bears in Russia. > > . > . > . > . > . > . > Yes, Russia is in Europe! Parts of it are, parts are in Asia. ---
**Author:** ![EmbarrassingDad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/embarrassingdad/32/5441_2.png) [@EmbarrassingDad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EmbarrassingDad)\ **Post date:** [February 29, 2020, 5:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-polar-bears-survive-in-antarctica/848411/64 "2020-02-29T05:44:57Z")
Thank you again, **Colibri** , SD Curator of Critters. 🙂 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-polar-bears-survive-in-antarctica/848411.md?page=3)