Polar bears already face a number of perils: melting ice, grolar bears, Sarah Palin. Now it seems there may be even more bad news for bears. According to a recent BBC article, California scientists are giving hearing tests to polar bears to find out whether they could be adversely affected by increased noise from Arctic urbanization.
Normally, the Artic is pretty darn quiet, a good thing for bears considering that they have extremely sensitive little ears. But as the ice melts, people will start to move in, and like any rural area that’s suffered at the hands of industrialization and urbanization, it’s going to create a lot of noise.
According to the article, noisiness can negatively affect polar bears, which have a much larger hearing range than humans. For one, if bears can’t hear each other over long distances, their breeding patterns could be disrupted because they won’t be able to find each other to mate. Even worse, the animals may hear unfamiliar noises from industrial operations and, thinking those noises indicate food, could be led astray into potentially dangerous areas.





Comments