I, for one, welcome the mutant polar bears.
'It's kind of the first time that we believe we've seen a mammal system such as the polar bear, where temperature has been the lead cause, and environmental stress at increased temperature, is impacting their DNA, their genome in real time,' Alice Godden, the lead author of the study, told ABC News.
Researchers say the discovery of these genetic changes offers a glimmer of hope for the bears' survival, as two-thirds of the world's population could perish by 2050.
Climate cultists are always crying about the polar bear.
There were only 5,000-10,000 polar bears left in the wild in the 1960s. Now, after 60 years of David Attenborough warning us about the melting polar ice caps, there are only ... 25,000-30,000 left. ðŸ˜
Look at the drama lathered on here:
'This unique group of polar bears is essentially rewriting parts of its own genome to survive,' Godden said in a press release. She calls the breakthrough 'a desperate survival mechanism against melting sea ice.'
Oh no! What kind of "desperate" changes are they seeing?
They're becoming vegetarians:
...scientists found that the bears in southeastern Greenland are responding to their changing environment by incorporating more plants into their historically fatty diet.
If you think making bears slightly more omnivore-ish is bad, wait until you see what happened to wolves...
Here's the part I found funniest:
The experiment found that the southeastern polar bears of Greenland have diverged genetically from their northeastern counterparts, who live in a colder part of the region and were separated from each other roughly 200 years ago.
WAIT, you're telling me that after 200 years apart, two groups of isolated bear populations have slight genetic variations with slightly different diets that are adapted to their environments?
Back to the drama:
...a desperate survival mechanism against melting sea ice.
I'm going to start describing my pale skin as "a desperate survival mechanism against the lack of sun." 😂
Is ABC News just desperate for stories today?
If we shift the conversation to people, there are all sorts of people groups that have unique genetic markers after just a few hundred years of separation. Consider how the Scandinavians that invaded England and sacked Paris (multiple times) developed totally different languages and cultures than the ones that went east and conquered Kiev, fought for the Byzantine Empire, and then founded the Russian Empire.
There are thousands of such examples in human history. Even generic ancestry tests from companies that totally-aren't-stealing-your-DNA can pinpoint your heritage with startlingly accuracy.
There is a reason that over 90% of western Europeans can digest lactose as adults, and almost all of them can digest beer.
Conversely, there is a reason that 99% of East Asians are lactose intolerant and 30-50% of them carry the ALDH22 allele that makes it hard to process alcohol.
East Asia, however, has more copies of a gene called AMY1 that enables faster digestion of starches like rice, whereas meat-heavy groups like the Siberian Yakut have a harder time processing more carbs.
In Central Africa, populations have a variation of the T2R16 gene that makes cassava root - a major starch in their diet - taste less bitter.
You might know that sickle cell disease in Africans is a genetic mutation to protect blood cells against malaria, but 400 million people across the Middle East, Africa, and SE Asia have a deficiency in glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD). Meant to protect against malaria, it causes them to have an immune reaction when they come into contact with fava beans!
If humans have such an amazing array of genetic differences due to diet and environment, should we be surprised that polar bears might do the same?
This study actually convinces me that the polar bears are gonna be just fine!
(If we can stop China from poaching every animal on the planet, that is.)
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