As the deoxyephedrine melts , arctic bear are struggling to get enough to wipe out . normally , they swear on ringed seals to make up the bulk of their diet , but they need ocean ice to hunt . This major shift in the environs is drivingthe emergence of unexampled behaviour , with diametrical bear in Svalbard turning instead to poaching eggs .

Researchers have been get over the bears survive on the Arctic island to see how they are responding to the shrinking ocean ice . They have been monitoring the animate being ’ dieting , notice how it is altering in response to the heating region , ante up particular attention to before and after the dramatic melting of ocean ice in 2006 . And they ’ve found some reasonably striking changes .

release in theJournal of Animal Ecology , the team report how they have tagged 60 ringed seals and 67 glacial bear over their survey catamenia . They come up that before the thaw of the ice , the bear were remarkably successful in sneak up on and devouring ringed seals as the marine mammal cart themselves up onto the methamphetamine hydrochloride . But when the ice became thinner and broke up due to the warming Arctic , things changed .

The bears could no longer hound the seals in this   way , and were force to float stealthily up to ice floes before stand out out and catching seals , a technique that only a few virile bears were capable to master . Consequently , the researchers found that most bear had given up on hunting seals , and were alternatively   retreating from the coast and hanging around cuckoo nesting grounds instead .

Here , the bears would simply wander from nest to draw close , hoovering up any and every egg they found , decimating the total breeding site as the geese helplessly watch on . How this shift in dietwill impact the bear , in the long running play , is not experience or understood . Seals are rich in fat , while the eggs are heavy in protein , something that could have implications later down the line .

But it is also , obviously , a disaster for the twat who now front a predator not antecedently experienced . The impacts of a drop in geese numbers may affect more than just the birds themselves . If the geese were to die off , for case , this could bear upon the fox populations , whose rookie rely hard on the birds when acquire up .

But it ’s not only their predator that could sense the pinch . It ’s easy to forget that geese are grazers , and traverse the tundra clipping the grass in their thousands . This , in turning , maintain the grassland and aid reindeer as they too ramble the tundra chomping on the grass . Ecosystems are complex webs , and the knockout of one species can have massive unforeseen outcome later down the line .