Magic Statistics

On 16 April, American hunter Jim Martell shot an odd-looking bear near the southern tip of Banks Island, Northwest Territories.  DNA tests have now determined that it was a polar bear-grizzly hybrid, apparently the first ever found in the wild.

Martell, a sport hunter from the United States, was on a guided hunt when he shot the bear on April 16 near Nelson Head on southern Banks Island.

Since it looked like a polar bear but had strange colouration, the hide was turned over to the Environment and Natural Resources department for testing.

The probability of a polar bear and a grizzly bear mating is considered extremely low for two reasons.  Polar bears mate on the sea ice while grizzly bears mate on the land, and relationships between the two species are generally more adversarial.

The tests had serious implications for hunter Martell because he purchased a tag that allowed him to shoot a polar bear.  If he shot a grizzly instead, he'd have been liable for a $1000 fine or a year in jail, not to mention loss of the bear's hide and wasting the $50,000 he shelled out for his guided hunting trip.  Now the hide will be returned to him.

Mr Martell is quite the avid hunter: He's already back in NWT on a grizzly hunt.

via Clayton Cramer.

Some informed conjecture on how a polar bear and a grizzly bear came to mate, from this morning’s Whitehorse CBC Radio broadcast (not available online):

Ian Sterling has been studying polar bears on the Beaufort Sea for almost 30 years. He says it’s the first time he’s ever heard of the two species mating but has an idea of how the parents might have met.

“The polar bear in question was quite likely a younger female, may have even been the first time that she’d mated and hadn’t really got things all figured out.”

And Sterling points out that such a coupling would not have been a one night stand.

“And then he’ll stay with her and keep interacting until she lets him mate and mount and then for 2 or 3 days or 4 days they’ll mate many, many times and both polar bears and grizzly bears do this.”

Perhaps, for the sake of science, it’s a good thing the two bears met during mating season otherwise they may not have been consumed by passion but rather they may have consumed each other.

That parting shot passes for a joke on local CBC Radio.