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    "headline": "Polar bears are among the few animals that hunt people, yet only 73 attacks were logged from 1870 to 2014",
    "description": "Polar bears are one of few animals that treat people as prey, but a 2017 study found only 73 attacks by wild polar bears from 1870 to 2014.",
    "datePublished": "2026-11-13T20:12:00+00:00",
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    "keywords": "Churchill, Manitoba, Polar bear, Svalbard, USGS",
    "articleBody": "A wild polar bear that walks toward a person may be doing something very few large animals ever do: treating a human as food. Yet across 144 years of records, researchers found just 73 attacks by wild polar bears in the five countries where the species lives. That count comes from a range-wide database built by Arctic wildlife agencies and published in 2017 by a team led by James Wilder, with co-authors from the US Geological Survey and Norwegian, Greenlandic, Russian and Canadian bear specialists. Covering 1870 to 2014 in Canada, Greenland, Norway, Russia and the United States, it logged 20 deaths and 63 injuries in total. Why a polar bear is different Most bears that confront people are defending cubs, a carcass or their space. The 2017 team judged that in most polar bear attacks, the bear behaved as a predator. The animal is the largest land carnivore alive, with adult males weighing 300 to 800 kilograms (660 to 1,760 pounds), and it is the most meat-dependent of all bears, built to catch ringed seals on the sea ice. The bears most likely to threaten people were thin, hungry adult males. Females rarely attacked, and when they did the researchers usually linked it to protecting cubs. Nearly every attack involved one or two people, never a crowd. Wildlife biologists stress a point that cuts against the species’ fearsome image: the polar bear is not more aggressive toward humans than brown or black bears. What sets it apart is where trouble happens. Polar bear incidents happen more often in and around settlements, likely because starving bears come looking for food. The short list of animals that prey on people Zoologists use the term “man-eater” narrowly. It means an animal that hunts humans as a pattern, not one that bites in self-defense or scavenges. By that standard, most well-documented cases involve five groups: Tigers, which history records as killing more people than any other wild mammal by direct attack Lions, which in rare cases enter villages at night Leopards, where only a small share of individuals ever turn to people Large crocodiles, especially saltwater and Nile crocodiles Polar bears, chiefly young or underfed animals Even within those species, the habit is unusual. Old age, injury, illness and scarce natural prey show up again and again as reasons an individual crosses that line. Predators in fiction stalk people by default; real ones almost never do. Sea ice is the key variable Here is the link that worries researchers. Polar bears hunt from the ice. When it melts for longer each summer, bears spend more weeks on shore, fasting and close to towns. The 2017 paper warned that more nutritionally stressed bears staying longer on land near people could raise the risk to both humans and bears. Arctic towns already plan around it. Churchill, Manitoba, keeps a holding facility, often called a polar bear jail, where problem bears wait until the bay freezes. The town is also testing an AI camera at its dump to warn residents when polar bears approach. Svalbard posts road signs warning that the bears can appear anywhere on the archipelago. Encounters with other large predators turn on the same rule of keeping distance and making noise, as one Canadian woman showed when she scared off a cougar by playing Metallica on her phone. And size is not everything in the wild: Yellowstone visitors watched a coyote nip a young grizzly bear that simply walked away. Putting 73 in perspective Spread over the 144 years in the database, 73 attacks works out to about one every two years across all five countries where the bears live. The authors called reported attacks extremely rare and asked for better investigations so that safety advice rests on solid data. Their database, the Polar Bear-Human Information Management System, is designed to keep collecting cases from all five range countries. Further reading USGS: Polar bear attacks on humans: Implications of a changing climate Wikipedia: Polar bear Wikipedia: Man-eating animal Image: Christopher Michel, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by our Editorial Desk. How we work.",
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