Something amazing is happening to polar bears. People living on Svalbard in the Norwegian archipelago appear healthier than ever after eating hundreds of bird eggs. And in the warmer regions of Greenland, bears are showing signs of genetic adaptation to climate change.
The discovery appears to be an unexpected silver lining for the beleaguered species, which for decades has been photographed clinging to disappearing sea ice and has become a “poster animal” for the effects of climate change. So what do the promising signs mean for polar bears? Could they actually survive even if the Arctic sea ice melts rapidly?
Experts told Live Science that the new findings indicate there may be unexpected refuges where some polar bear populations cling and survive longer than models suggest. These discoveries alone won’t be enough to save polar bears from extinction, but they may buy these iconic creatures a little more time as the world works to do the only thing that can save polar bears: reduce carbon emissions.
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creatures frozen in ice
The future of the polar bear (Ursus maritimus) has long looked uncertain. These animals depend on sea ice and hunt ringed seals (Pusa hispida) and bearded seals (Erignathus barbatus), which can swim better than bears underwater. As the climate warms, sea ice is melting and this important hunting ground is shrinking. A 2020 study predicts that if greenhouse gas emissions continue as usual, all but a small number of polar bear populations will be extinct by 2100, and remaining polar bear populations will hang on longer in a few “last refuges” such as the Queen Elizabeth Islands, Canada’s northernmost Arctic archipelago.
But recent positive findings raise the intriguing prospect that polar bears may be able to survive climate change after all.
A study published in January in the journal Scientific Reports examined the physical condition of 770 adult polar bears in Svalbard from 1995 to 2019. They found that, despite rapid sea ice loss, on average they were thinner until 2000, but have gotten even fatter since then.
John Earls, a senior scientist at the Norwegian Polar Research Institute in Tromsø, told Live Science that this was surprising because a fat polar bear is a healthy polar bear. “The rapid decline in sea ice was expected to worsen the body condition.”
And a study published in the journal Mobile DNA in December 2025 found that polar bears in southern Greenland are using “jump genes” to rapidly rewrite their DNA, potentially helping them adapt to warmer habitats by changing the way they handle heat and process fat.
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So do these discoveries really mean the situation for polar bears is no longer so bleak?
Andrew DeRocher, a biologist at the University of Alberta who worked with Earls on the Svalbard bear study, told Live Science that there are 20 unique polar bear populations around the Arctic, each living in slightly different environments and facing different levels of sea ice loss.
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“The basic premise is that when you lose sea ice, you lose habitat for bears,” he says. “They are forced on land for longer. They expend more energy and are then in worse conditions, which has knock-on effects on their survival and reproduction.” But between the islands of the Svalbard region and those of Russia’s Arctic near Franz Josef Land, an incredibly productive ecosystem exists.
He said because the region is on a continental shelf, the waters off Svalbard are relatively shallow and warm, with nutrient-rich water flowing in from the North Atlantic. This means that polar bears have many prey options. They eat walruses, birds, and even bird eggs, and are in good health.
“In dense colonies of ground-nesting birds like ducks and geese, bears have been observed eating hundreds of eggs a day,” Earls said. “They raid quite a few nests and eat everything.”
Desrochers also said that although the number of seals in Svalbard is declining, seal densities are higher where there is ice, which may make them easier to catch. Sometimes bears in Svalbard are seen hunting reindeer (Rangifer tarandus platyrhynchus).
Unfortunately, there aren’t enough reindeer to sustain the polar bear population, he said. “So no matter how great the pictures of reindeer shearing are, it’s of no use to them.”
Louise Archer, a polar bear scientist at the University of Toronto Scarborough, said the new insights highlight how resourceful polar bears are.
“What we’re seeing in Svalbard is very interesting in terms of all the different behaviors that polar bears can adopt to cope with changes in their environment,” Archer told Live Science.
However, the shift to hunting bird eggs, walruses, and reindeer does not mean that they are developing evolutionary adaptations to an ice-free world.
“They’ve always done it that way,” DeLocher said. “They’re just being forced to do it even more.”
He added that it is clear that permanent land relocation is unlikely, as they move onto the ice as soon as it reappears. “Sea ice is what allows polar bears to survive,” Desrochers said. “The high-fat diet that seals can provide allows them to survive in incredibly cold environments.”
Physical condition isn’t everything, he says. Svalbard’s polar bears may be in good health, but they breed on the ice. With large areas of Svalbard’s west coast now free of sea ice, key areas where they build their burrows have disappeared. A December 2025 modeling study estimates that breeding and offspring survival rates will decrease around Svalbard in years with low ice. “We just can’t get the ice in time,” DeLocher said.
Genetic adaptation?
But is there hope with the news that some polar bears appear to be genetically adapted to warmer climates? Alice Godden, a biological scientist at the University of East Anglia, and her colleagues looked at genetic elements that can be copied and pasted to jump around the genome and cause mutations in subpopulations of polar bears in northern and southern Greenland. They found more of this genetic activity in warmer southern populations.
Many of the changes in gene expression were in metabolic pathways that control fat processing, so they may be a response to warmer weather or changes in diet. This is a promising sign that the bears are adapting, but the timescale needed for such changes to make a meaningful difference is longer than the time polar bears are thought to have left, Godden said.
Although much of the Arctic Ocean could be free of summer ice by 2050, the length of a polar bear generation is about 11.5 years, so genetic adaptation to an ice-free ecosystem will likely take hundreds or even thousands of years, Godden said.
“They’re adapting as best they can, but without human intervention, the chances don’t seem very good,” she says.
Desrochers suspects that the genetic change may not be an adaptation at all, but rather a sign that the bears are under more stress, which could cause DNA damage, thereby causing further mutations and essentially accelerating biological aging.
A fragment of hope amidst an overall dark situation
Ultimately, some polar bear populations may fare better than others, depending on local geography, food availability, and sea ice dynamics. “We think there may be 20 different subpopulations, 20 different scenarios, all following the same trajectory, but on different kinds of time scales,” Derocher said.
Earls agreed. “I think polar bears will probably disappear from much of the Arctic as sea ice retreats further and further north, but it’s very, very hard to say how fast that will happen,” he said.
Archer expects populations to decline sooner in areas such as western Hudson Bay, southern Hudson Bay and western Canada. These areas lack rich ecosystems, and bears have already spent months without sea ice.
But as news from Svalbard shows, there are potential refuges where bears can last longer. In other parts of the High Arctic, such as around Canada’s Arctic Islands, sea ice remains so thick that little light penetrates into the water, leaving little energy to support the food chain. As this ice begins to thin, more algae will grow, supporting communities of invertebrates, fish and seals that polar bears feed on, potentially allowing polar bears to persist in the region beyond the end of the century, Archer said.
It is unclear how long Svalbard can sustain a viable bear population. “Are Svalbard’s bears going to experience a catastrophically warm year next year or the year after, or can they stay like this for another 20 years before things get really bad?” Desrochers said.
After all, the chances of these iconic bears surviving beyond the end of this century depend primarily on reducing emissions. “There are some changes that are already in the system, but there is a lot we can do to change the future for them.”
For example, if we limit global warming to 3.7 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) above pre-industrial levels, adult polar bears could survive until 2100, even at the southern end of their range in Hudson Bay, Archer said.
“We are not on an unstoppable trajectory toward a tipping point where sea ice disappears forever,” Archer said. “How the future unfolds is completely in our hands.”
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