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You are here: Home / Animals / What Do Polar Bears Eat and Do Polar Bears Eat Penguins?

What Do Polar Bears Eat and Do Polar Bears Eat Penguins?

June 4, 2020 by Karen Hill

Polar bears will eat about anything that moves, as well as a lot of things that don’t.

What Do Polar Bears Eat

They probably would eat penguins if given a chance, but because the two are on opposite ends of the earth, it just won’t happen.

Polar bears and penguins are literally poles apart.

Polar bears live in the Arctic near the North Pole, while penguins live in the Antarctic near the South.

As a result, polar bears mostly eat seals. Seals, as you may know already, eat penguins.

But again, given the geographic distance, the seals in question are completely different species, so penguins and polar bears aren’t even connected by a food chain.

Specifically, polar bears especially love the ringed seal. One of their tricks is to hang around ice holes waiting for the seals to come up for air, and then render them unconscious by bopping them across the noggin.

Polar bears also like charging the seals’ nesting grounds and eating their poor blubbery little babies.

Meanwhile down south, it’s hungry leopard seals that eat penguins.

They like to swim below thin spots of ice at penguin rookeries watching the black-and-white blotches through the ice above, ready to burst through and grab a bird.

Leopard seals can completely consume a penguin in five to ten minutes, or roughly the time it takes to watch an old episode of Tennessee Tuxedo. Sea lions and killer whales also like to eat those cute little waddlers.

Oh, sometimes nature can be so cruel.

Penguins taste just like arctic terns.

Related Facts

  • How Would Penguins Survive In the Arctic and Would Polar Bears Survive In Antarctica If They Moved There?
  • History of Ice Cream
  • Why do Mother Penguins Abandon Their Eggs Leaving the Penguin Fathers to Raise the Chicks Alone?
  • How do Emperor Penguins stay warm in Antarctica when it’s so cold?
  • Why Do Penguins Live in Antarctica at the South Pole and Not in the Arctic at the North Pole?
  • What Do Penguins Eat and How Big do Penguins Get?

Filed Under: Animals

About Karen Hill

Karen Hill is a freelance writer, editor, and columnist. Born in New York, her work has appeared in the Examiner, Yahoo News, Buzzfeed, among others.

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