Polar bears can save themselves from climate change effects to change their eating habit

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EUROPE: A new study has suggested that polar bears may be able to combat the effects of climate change on their hunting habits with a change in diet.
Scientists have predicted that polar bear numbers will decline as their icy homes melt, separating the bears from sea ice hunting grounds, causing mass starvation by 2068.
Polar bears rely on sea ice for food – hunting seal pups in particular – but a new paper published in the PLOS-ONE science journal claims polar bears could survive on land-based food.
Scientists at the AMNH believe the animals have dietary flexibility with researcher Robert Rockwell saying the bears are opportunists.
“[Polar bears] have been documented consuming various types and combinations of land-based food since the earliest natural history records,” Dr Rockwell said.
Dr Rockwell and Linda Gormezano found prey such as caribou, snow geese and snow goose eggs could provide more calories than the bears would burn hunting them.
“Our results suggest that the net energy from land-based food, after subtracting costs of limited movement to obtain it, could eliminate all projected nutritional deficits of starving adult male polar bears and likely other demographic groups as well,” they wrote.
However it’s not known if the bears would be interested in the new diet, but the researchers suggested that “social learning and energetic need” may encourage new hunting habits.