title: Alexander II of Russia

text: In 1838–39, the young bachelor, Alexander made the Grand Tour of Europe which was standard for young men of his class at that time. One of the purposes of the tour was to select a suitable bride for himself. His father Nicholas I of Russia suggested Princess Alexandrine of Baden as a suitable choice, but he was prepared to allow Alexander to choose his own bride, as long as she was not Roman Catholic or a commoner. Alexander stayed for three days with the maiden Queen Victoria. The two got along well, but there was no question of marriage between two major monarchs.


title: Alexander II of Russia

text: In Germany, Alexander made an unplanned stop in Darmstadt. He was reluctant to spend "a possibly dull evening" with their host Louis II, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine, but he agreed to do so because Vasily Zhukovsky insisted that his entourage was exhausted and needed a rest. During dinner, he met and was charmed by Princess Marie, the 14-year-old daughter of Louis II, Grand Duke of Hesse. He was so smitten that he declared that he would rather abandon the succession than not marry her. He wrote to his father: "I liked her terribly at first sight. If you permit it, dear father, I will come back to Darmstadt after England." When he left Darmstadt, she gave him a locket that contained a piece of her hair.


title: Alexander II of Russia

text: Alexander's parents initially did not support his decision to marry Princess Marie of Hesse. There were troubling rumors about her paternity. Although she was the legal daughter of Ludwig II, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine, there were rumors that Marie was the biological daughter of her mother's lover, Baron August von Senarclens de Grancy. Alexander's parents worried that Marie could have inherited her mother's consumption. Alexander's mother considered the Hesse family grossly inferior to the Hohenzollerns and Romanovs.


title: Alexander II of Russia

text: In April 1840, Alexander's engagement to Princess Marie was officially announced. In August, the 16-year-old Marie left Darmstadt for Russia. In December, she was received into the Orthodox Church and received the names "Maria Alexandrovna".


title: Alexander II of Russia

text: Alexander particularly placed hope in his eldest son, Tsarevich Nicholas. In 1864, Alexander II found Nicholas a bride, Princess Dagmar of Denmark, second daughter of King Christian IX of Denmark and younger sister to Alexandra, Princess of Wales and King George I of Greece. In 1865, Nicholas died of cerebrospinal meningitis. Alexander was devastated by Nicholas' death, and his nephew Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich of Russia reflected that "his shoulders were bent, and he walked so slowly that we all felt as though his loss had robbed him of all his strength."


title: Alexander II of Russia

text: Alexander's second son, Grand Duke Alexander became tsarevich and married the late Tsarevich Nicholas's fiancée. The couple married in November 1866, with Dagmar converting to Orthodoxy and taking the name Maria Feodorovna.


title: Alexander II of Russia

text: Alexander's favorite child was his daughter, Grand Duchess Marie Alexandrovna. He reflected that his daughter had "never caused us anything but joy. We lost our eldest girl and we had so ardently wished for another – her birth was a joy and a delight, not to be described, and her whole life has been a continuation." In 1873, a quarrel broke out between the courts of Queen Victoria and Alexander II, when Victoria's second son, Prince Alfred, made it known that he wished to marry the Grand Duchess. The tsar objected to the queen's request to have his daughter come to England in order to meet her, and after the January 1874 wedding in St. Petersburg, the tsar insisted that his daughter be granted precedence over the Princess of Wales, which the queen rebuffed. Later that year, after attending the engagement ceremonies of his second surviving son, Vladimir, to Marie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin in Berlin, Alexander II, with his third son, Alexei, accompanying him, made a visit to England. While not a state visit, but simply a trip to see his daughter, he nevertheless partook in receptions at Buckingham Palace and Marlborough House, inspected the artillery at the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich, reviewed troops at Aldershot and met both Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli and the leader of the opposition, William Gladstone. Disraeli observed of the tsar that "his mien and manners are gracious and graceful, but the expression of his countenance, which I could now very closely examine, is sad. Whether it is satiety, or the loneliness of despotism, or fear of a violent death, I know not, but it was a visage of, I should think, habitual mournfulness."


title: Alexander II of Russia

text: In 1866, Alexander II took a mistress, Catherine Dolgorukova, with whom he would father three surviving children. In 1880, he moved his mistress and their children into the Winter Palace. Alexander's affair alienated all his children except Alexei and Marie Alexandrovna. Courtiers spread stories that the dying Empress Marie was forced to hear the noise of Catherine's children moving about overhead, but their respective rooms were actually far. In May 1880, Grand Duchess Marie Alexandrovna visited Russia to see her dying mother. She was horrified to learn that Catherine lived in the Palace and she confronted him. Shocked by the loss of support from his daughter, he quietly retreated to Gatchina Palace for military reviews. The quarrel, however, evidently, jolted his conscience enough to lead him to return to St. Petersburg each morning to ask after his wife's health.


title: Alexander II of Russia

text: On , Alexander II married his mistress Catherine Dolgorukova morganatically in a secret ceremony at Tsarskoe Selo. The action scandalized both his family and the court. It violated Orthodox custom which required a minimum period of 40 days mourning between the death of a spouse and the remarriage of a surviving spouse, eliciting criticism in foreign courts. Alexander bestowed on Catherine the title of Princess Yurievskaya and legitimized their children.


title: Alexander II of Russia

text: Alexander II appears prominently in the opening two chapters of Jules Verne's "Michael Strogoff" (published in 1876 during Alexander's own lifetime). The Emperor sets the book's plot in motion and sends its eponymous protagonist on the dangerous and vital mission which would occupy the rest of the book. Verne presents Alexander II in a highly positive light, as an enlightened yet firm monarch, dealing confidently and decisively with a rebellion. Alexander's liberalism shows in a dialogue with the chief of police, who says "There was a time, sire, when NONE returned from Siberia", to be immediately rebuked by the Emperor who answers:


title: Alexander II of Russia

text: The films "Katia" (1938) and "Magnificent Sinner" (1959) depict a highly fictionalized account of the Tsar's romance with the woman who became his second wife.


title: Alexander II of Russia

text: In "The Tiger in the Well", Philip Pullman refers to the assassination – though he never names Alexander – and to the pogroms that followed. The anti-Jewish attacks play an important role in the novel's plot. Andrew Williams's historical thriller, To Kill A Tsar, tells the story of The People's Will revolutionaries and the assassination through the eyes of an Anglo-Russian doctor living in St Petersburg.


title: Alexander II of Russia

text: Oscar Wilde's first play "Vera; or, The Nihilists", written in 1880Alexander II's last yearfeatures Russian revolutionaries who seek to assassinate a reform-minded Emperor (and who, in the play, ultimately fail in their plot). Though Wilde's fictional Emperor differs from the actual Alexander, contemporary events in Russia – as published in the British press of the time – clearly influenced Wilde.


title: Alexander II of Russia

text: Alexander II's reasons to sell Alaska to the United States in 1867 are fictionized in the epilogue of the novel "Forty-Ninth" by Boris Pronsky and Craig Britton, in a form of a letter to Catherine Dolgorukova. Prior to that, the book explores the events immediately after the first assassination attempt on the Tsar in 1866, as well as the relationship with his brother, Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich.


title: Alexander II of Russia

text: Mark Twain describes a short visit with Alexander II in Chapter 37 of "The Innocents Abroad", describing him as "very tall and spare, and a determined-looking man, though a very pleasant-looking one nevertheless. It is easy to see that he is kind and affectionate. There is something very noble in his expression when his cap is off."


title: Rachel Brosnahan

text: Rachel Elizabeth Brosnahan (born July 12, 1990) is an American actress. She stars as aspiring stand-up comedian Miriam "Midge" Maisel in the Amazon Prime Video period comedy series "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" (2017–present), for which she won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series in 2018 and two consecutive Golden Globe Awards for Best Actress – Television Series Musical or Comedy in 2018 and 2019. She also had a recurring role in the Netflix political thriller series "House of Cards" (2013–2015) as Rachel Posner, for which she received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination, and played a lead role in the WGN drama series "Manhattan" (2014–2015).


title: Rachel Brosnahan

text: She made her film debut in the horror film "The Unborn" (2009), and has appeared in films including "Beautiful Creatures" (2013), "Louder Than Bombs" (2015), "The Finest Hours" (2016) and "Patriots Day" (2016).


title: Rachel Brosnahan

text: Brosnahan was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to Carol and Earl Brosnahan, who worked in children's publishing. Her mother is British and her father is American and of Irish descent. From age four, Brosnahan was raised in Highland Park, Illinois. She has a younger brother and sister. She is a niece of the late fashion designer Kate Spade ("née" Brosnahan).


title: Rachel Brosnahan

text: Though she is well-known for playing a Jewish character on television (Mrs. Maisel in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel), Brosnahan herself is not of Jewish descent. She says she was "happily immersed" in Jewish culture thanks to the community of Highland Park, Illinois.


title: Rachel Brosnahan

text: She attended Wayne Thomas Elementary School and Northwood Junior High School. She performed in musical theater during junior high and high school. At Highland Park High School, she was on the wrestling team for two years and was a snowboarding instructor. When she was 16, she took a class with Carole Dibo, director of Wilmette's Actors Training Center, who is now Brosnahan's manager. Brosnahan graduated from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in 2012.


title: Rachel Brosnahan

text: While still in high school, Brosnahan received her first movie role—that of Lisa in the Michael Bay-produced horror film "The Unborn" (2009). In college, she appeared in single episodes of television series such as "Gossip Girl", "The Good Wife", "Grey's Anatomy", and "In Treatment". After college, she began landing recurring roles in series such as the crime thriller "The Blacklist" (2014) and the short-lived medical drama "Black Box" (2014).


title: Rachel Brosnahan

text: She first appeared on stage in 2009 in "Up" at Steppenwolf Theatre followed by her Broadway debut in "The Big Knife" with Roundabout Theatre Company in 2013. In 2016 she played Desdemona in "Othello" at New York Theatre Workshop opposite David Oyelowo and Daniel Craig.


title: Rachel Brosnahan

text: In 2013, she starred as Rachel Posner in the critically acclaimed Netflix political drama "House of Cards" with Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright. Although she was initially booked for only two episodes, she caught the eye of showrunner Beau Willimon, and her character was significantly expanded. Her role brought her career prominence, and she received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series.


title: Rachel Brosnahan

text: In 2016, she appeared in Woody Allen's Amazon series "Crisis in Six Scenes" with Allen, Elaine May and Miley Cyrus.


title: Rachel Brosnahan

text: Since 2017, she has appeared as the title character in the Amazon period comedy series "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel". She has said that her exposure to Jewish culture growing up helped prepare her for the role of Midge Maisel, a 1950s Jewish housewife who pursues a career in stand-up comedy when her marriage fails. Her performance has earned her a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress In A Comedy Series, two Golden Globe Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and two Critics' Choice Television Awards, among other accolades.


title: Rachel Brosnahan

text: After her Emmy Award win, Brosnahan said that "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" resonated with viewers because "the show is equal parts fantasy and reality. It has beautiful clothes, beautiful sets. I think in some ways it's aspirational too. It's about a woman who's reinventing herself after completing the dream she had laid out for herself. Everything falls apart; she finds herself anew. It's never too late to do that. And it's funny and, I think, filled with joy at its core, and that's something we need a lot more of in the world right now."


title: Rachel Brosnahan

text: Brosnahan appeared in the drama film "The Courier" with Benedict Cumberbatch, released in January 2020. In December 2020, Amazon released "I'm Your Woman", in which she starred with Arinzé Kene. In 2022, she starred in the western "Dead for a Dollar" which premiered at the 79th Venice International Film Festival.


title: Rachel Brosnahan

text: In 2023, she is set to star in the revival of Lorraine Hansberry's "The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window" opposite Oscar Isaac at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.


title: Rachel Brosnahan

text: It was reported in 2018 that Brosnahan had married actor Jason Ralph, but she later revealed in January 2019 that they had been married "for years" before their relationship became public. Both attended the 76th Golden Globe Awards ceremony in 2019, where she thanked him during her acceptance speech.


title: Alana Haim

text: Alana Mychal Haim (born December 15, 1991) is an American musician and actress. She is best known as a member of the pop rock band Haim, along with her two older sisters Este and Danielle, where she performs piano, guitar and vocals. In 2020, the band received a Grammy Award for Album of the Year nomination for their third album, "Women in Music Pt. III".


title: Alana Haim

text: In 2021, Haim starred in Paul Thomas Anderson's film "Licorice Pizza", for which she received critical acclaim and was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical, and a BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role.


title: Alana Haim

text: Alana Haim was born on December 15, 1991, in Los Angeles to a Jewish family. Her father, Mordechai "Moti" Haim, is an Israeli-born retired professional soccer player who moved to the United States in 1980. Her mother, Donna Rose, is a former elementary school art teacher from Philadelphia. Haim's paternal grandmother was originally from Bulgaria. She has two older sisters, Este (born 1986) and Danielle (born 1989).


title: Alana Haim

text: Haim was raised in the San Fernando Valley in a musical family. Her father was a drummer in a choir group; her mother was a folk singer, and a winning contestant on "The Gong Show" in the 1970s. They taught their young daughters to play various instruments, with Alana picking up percussion at the age of four. Growing up, the siblings were encouraged to listen to their parents' classic rock and Americana records, though they also developed their own liking of '90s R&B. The family eventually formed a band, Rockinhaim, and played their first rock concert at Los Angeles' Canter's Deli in 2000, with Moti on drums and Donna on vocals. They performed '70s and '80s rock covers every few months in the next decade, mostly at local fairs and fundraisers.


title: Alana Haim

text: Haim attended Los Angeles County High School for the Arts and graduated in 2010. She briefly attended Los Angeles Valley College before dropping out to focus on her music career.


title: Alana Haim

text: In 2007, Alana and her sisters formed the band Haim and released their EP "Forever" in 2012. They have appeared at many music festivals, one of which brought them to the attention of artist and musician Jay-Z, who signed them to his recently founded label Roc Nation in 2012. Haim signed with Columbia Records at the end of 2012, and was a featured artist at Jay Z's Made in America festival. Haim released their first studio album, "Days Are Gone", in September 2013. It was a commercial success, and they were musical guests on "Saturday Night Live". They released their second studio album, "Something to Tell You", in July 2017. In June 2020, they released their third album, "Women in Music, Pt. III", which was nominated for Album of the Year at the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards, with the single, "The Steps", nominated for Best Rock Performance. The album was widely featured on year-end best album lists, including those of "The Guardian", "NPR", "Pitchfork" and "Stereogum".


title: Alana Haim

text: Haim stars in "Licorice Pizza", a 2021 feature film directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, who previously directed several of the band's music videos and a short documentary on the making of "Something to Tell You". "Licorice Pizza" is set in the 1970s, where Haim plays opposite Cooper Hoffman, the son of Anderson's late collaborator Philip Seymour Hoffman. Reviewing the film in the "Los Angeles Times", Justin Chang called Haim "the star of this boisterous, bighearted movie and its raison d'être". In "The Hollywood Reporter", David Rooney praised her performance as "an incandescent presence that marks the arrival of a fully formed screen star". For her performance she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical, a BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role and a Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Actress.


title: Alana Haim

text: "For her awards and nominations as a member of Haim, see: List of awards and nominations received by Haim"


title: Candyman (2021 film)

text: Candyman is a 2021 supernatural slasher film directed by Nia DaCosta and written by Jordan Peele, Win Rosenfeld, and DaCosta. The film is a direct sequel to the 1992 film of the same name and the fourth film in the "Candyman" film series, based on the short story "The Forbidden" by Clive Barker. The film stars Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Teyonah Parris, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, and Colman Domingo with Vanessa Williams, Virginia Madsen, and Tony Todd reprising their roles from the original film.


title: Candyman (2021 film)

text: Plans for another "Candyman" film began in the early 2000s, with original director Bernard Rose wanting to make a prequel film about Candyman and Helen's love. However, the studio turned it down and the project entered development hell. By 2018, Peele signed on as producer for a new film using his company, Monkeypaw Productions and later, in November that same year, it was confirmed that Peele would produce the film with Universal Pictures and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and partnered with Rosenfeld to co-produce the film while DaCosta signed on as director. Principal photography for the film began in August 2019 and wrapped in September 2019 in Chicago, Illinois.


title: Candyman (2021 film)

text: "Candyman" was theatrically released in the United States on August 27, 2021, by Universal Pictures. Its release date was delayed three times from an original June 2020 date due to concerns regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. The film received generally positive reviews from critics, who praised DaCosta's direction, visual style, and the blend of social commentary with horror. It has grossed $77 million worldwide against a $25 million budget.


title: Candyman (2021 film)

text: In 1977 at Chicago's Cabrini–Green housing projects, a young boy witnesses the killing of Sherman Fields, a homeless man with a hook for a hand. Suspected of giving a white child a razor blade in a piece of candy, Sherman is beaten to death by police but later proven innocent.


title: Candyman (2021 film)

text: In 2019, artist Anthony McCoy lives in Chicago with his girlfriend, gallery director Brianna Cartwright. Seeking inspiration, Anthony explores the projects after Brianna's brother Troy tells them the story of Helen Lyle, who is believed responsible for a killing spree and briefly kidnapping a baby in Cabrini-Green. Stung on the hand by a bee, Anthony meets laundromat owner William Burke, the boy who witnessed Sherman's death. William introduces him to the urban legend of the Candyman, which Anthony tells Brianna and jokingly performs its curse: by saying "Candyman" five times to a mirror, Sherman's spirit will appear and kill the summoner.


title: Candyman (2021 film)

text: Inspired by Sherman's death and the Candyman legend, Anthony creates an elaborate art piece titled "Say My Name" for a show curated by Brianna and her colleague Clive, but his work is disparaged by critic Finley Stephens and other attendees. Later that night, Clive and his girlfriend Jerrica unwittingly summon the Candyman, who brutally murders them; Brianna discovers their bodies, triggering childhood memories of witnessing her father's suicide.


title: Candyman (2021 film)

text: Anthony compulsively paints gruesome portraits of unknown men, becoming obsessed as he investigates Helen Lyle and her own Candyman research, and has a vision of Sherman's ghost in an elevator. Interviewed by Finley, Anthony goads her into summoning the Candyman herself, and has another vision in a mirror of himself as Sherman. Joining Brianna at a business dinner, he leaves abruptly when he learns Finley has been murdered.


title: Candyman (2021 film)

text: He goes to William, who explains that the legend originated in the 1890s when Daniel Robitaille, an artist who had an interracial affair with a client's daughter, was mutilated and burnt alive. The legend has been renewed for generations with the souls of other murdered black men joining the Candyman "hive"; these are the subjects of Anthony's paintings. Anthony attempts to protect Brianna, but only frightens her with his increasingly erratic behavior.


title: Candyman (2021 film)

text: A teenager who attended Anthony's show and her friends are killed after summoning the Candyman in their school bathroom. Anthony undergoes a physical transformation, spreading from the bee sting on his hand across his entire body. He confronts his mother, Anne-Marie, after visiting a hospital and learning that she lied to him: he was born near Cabrini-Green, and was the baby taken the night Helen died. Anne-Marie claims the Candyman was responsible for the bloodshed blamed on Helen, and the community vowed never to speak his name.


title: Candyman (2021 film)

text: Brianna seeks out William, who abducts her to an abandoned church, where Anthony is in a fugue state. Shortly after Sherman's death, William witnessed his return as the Candyman when his sister and her friend summoned him and were killed. William plans to resurrect the Candyman "hive" to take revenge against the racist forces that have blighted the community. Sawing off Anthony's hand and replacing it with a hook, William has called the police to have Anthony wrongfully gunned down as another vengeful spirit to join the hive. Chased into the Cabrini-Green row houses, Brianna stabs William to death with a pen. She is confronted by Anthony, who collapses in her arms and is shot dead by police.


title: Candyman (2021 film)

text: Detaining Brianna in the backseat of a car, the police try to intimidate her into agreeing that Anthony was the killer, and his shooting was justified. Instead, she uses the rear-view mirror to summon the Candyman, who appears as Anthony and massacres the police. Swarming with bees, his face transforms in that of Daniel Robitaille, instructing Brianna to "Tell everyone" what she witnessed.


title: Candyman (2021 film)

text: The film's end credits feature a shadow puppet montage of members of the growing Candyman hive, including Daniel, Sherman, Anthony Crawford, James Byrd Jr., George Stinney and Anthony himself.


title: Candyman (2021 film)

text: In response to the success of "Freddy vs. Jason", a crossover film with "Leprechaun", titled "Candyman vs. Leprechaun", entered development. Tony Todd rejected the idea after being presented the script, saying "I will never be involved in something like that." In 2004, Todd confirmed to "Fangoria" that a fourth film was moving forward with Clive Barker's involvement and a $25 million budget. By 2009, Deon Taylor was attached to direct the film, which would have been set in New England during the winter at an all-women's college, and would ignore the events of "". The film eventually fell apart due to disputes amongst the rights owners.


title: Candyman (2021 film)

text: In September 2018, it was announced that Jordan Peele was in talks to produce a sequel of the 1992 film through his Monkeypaw Productions. In a 2018 interview with "Nightmare on Film Street", Todd stated, "I'd rather have him do it, someone with intelligence who's going to be thoughtful and dig into the whole racial makeup of who the "Candyman" is and why he existed in the first place." In November 2018, it was confirmed that Peele and Win Rosenfeld would produce the film with Universal and MGM, while Nia DaCosta signed on as director. The film would be a sequel to the original, taking place back in the new gentrified Cabrini–Green where the old housing projects development once stood in Chicago. MGM's Jonathan Glickman stated that "the story will not only pay reverence to Clive Barker's haunting and brilliant source material" but "will bring in a new generation of fans." The filming was due to commence in early 2019. On March 3, 2020, Robert A. A. Lowe was announced as the composer for the film.


title: Candyman (2021 film)

text: In January 2019, it was reported that Lakeith Stanfield was being eyed to star in the film as Anthony McCoy, a character who was portrayed as a baby in the original film by Lanesha Martin. At the time, there was no word as to whether Todd or any of past cast would reprise their roles. However, in an interview with "Entertainment Weekly", Todd spoke about Peele, stating: "I know that he's a fan. I'm hoping that I will appear in the film in some form of fashion. Wouldn't that make sense? But, it's Hollywood so I won't take it personally if it doesn't work out." He added, "If this new one is successful, it will shed light back on the original. I think that the subject matter is more important than any individuals and I mean that."


title: Candyman (2021 film)

text: In February 2019, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II was in talks to play McCoy, misreported as being in talks to portray the titular character. In response to the news, Todd offered his blessings over Twitter, stating: "Cheers to the Candyman, a wonderful character that I lived with for 25 years. He's brought grace and glory and a beautiful boatload of friends & family. I'm honored that the spirit of Daniel Robitaille & Cabrini–Green rises again. Truth to power! Blessings to the cast & crew". However, it was ultimately announced that Todd would reprise his role and that Abdul-Mateen II would instead be portraying Anthony McCoy. In March, Teyonah Parris was cast as Brianna Cartwright.


title: Candyman (2021 film)

text: Principal photography for "Candyman" took place between August and September 2019 in the Chicago area under the working title "Say My Name". Some filming took place in the North Park neighborhood during the month of September. Director DaCosta said the Near North Side's Marina City apartment buildings/condos were her favorite filming location in the city. Several scenes were filmed in the last standing remains of Cabrini–Green Homes' fenced-off row houses from 1942. "Candyman" is the first feature film to shoot on location inside the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Like the originally-planned 2004 film, the project had a $25 million production budget.


title: Candyman (2021 film)

text: The film features puppetry animation sequences which were created by Chicago-based puppet theater company Manual Cinema. DaCosta said she and Jordan Peele chose shadow puppets after speaking "early on about how much we would hate to do a traditional flashback scene (laughs) or to use footage from the original film, 'cause we wanted this to stand on its own. He mentioned shadow puppetry, and then in Chicago we developed [something] with this amazing theatre production company and from there it became less about flashbacks and more about how we depict these stories, these legends."


title: Candyman (2021 film)

text: "Candyman (2021)" original score soundtrack was composed by Chicago musician Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe who used solo compositions based around voice and extended modular synthesis techniques. He also used field recordings of Cabrini Green to capture the essence and spirit of the neighborhood and layered it as textural elements on top of the main instruments. In January 2022, "Variety" reported that Candyman's film score, briefly made the shortlist for the 2022 Academy Awards in the category of Best Original Score, however did not make the official final ballot list. Phillips Glass score ""Helen's Theme/Music Box"" was also reimagined by Lowe as a new interpolation on the soundtrack as well as in one scene and end credits in the film.


title: Candyman (2021 film)

text: "Candyman" was originally scheduled to be released on June 12, 2020, by Universal Pictures, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was pushed to September 25, 2020, and then again to October 16, 2020, taking the previous release date of "Halloween Kills". The film was then delayed to August 27, 2021. The film was then released on-demand on September 17, 2021.


title: Candyman (2021 film)

text: "Candyman" was released for purchase on digital video on demand with new exclusive early access to bonus material featurette clips including an alternate ending, extended scenes and behind the scenes interviews on streaming platforms such as Vudu, Apple TV, among others on November 2, 2021, and was released on DVD, Blu-ray and 4K UHD digital code release including all bonus material and special features on November 16, 2021.


title: Candyman (2021 film)

text: Summarizing the film's marketing results, RelishMix wrote that viewers were debating whether it was a remake or a sequel and that "with Jordan Peele on board, fan expectations run high in anticipation of the return of this classic horror villain, who's described as a 'Black Freddy or Black Jason', as the film explores racial issues. Plus, fans are looking at the journey into the fine art world, woven into artists' creations, as they are influenced by demons and ghosts." By August 2021, the film's promotional content was viewed 144.1 million times, 40 percent higher than the average horror film; the first and second trailers accumulated 75 and 60 million views, respectively. Additional marketing tactics about the film's premise included a Snapchat filter, a stunt activation in Chicago, and Peele daring viewers to tweet <nowiki>#Candyman</nowiki> five times, resulting in the film trending online.


title: Candyman (2021 film)

text: , "Candyman" has grossed $61.2 million in the United States and Canada, and $16.2 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $77.4 million.


title: Candyman (2021 film)

text: In the United States and Canada, "Candyman" was projected to gross around $15 million from 3,569 theaters in its opening weekend. The film took in $9.1 million on its first day, including $1.9 million from Thursday night previews. It went on to debut to $22 million, topping the box office. The audience was made up of 53% male, with African Americans (37%) and Caucasians (30%) making up a majority. The top markets in the U.S. were Los Angeles ($1.3 million) and New York ($1.1 million).


title: Candyman (2021 film)

text: DaCosta became the first Black female director to have a film finish number one at the box office. The film dropped 53.2% in its sophomore weekend to $10.3 million (and a total of $12.5 million over the four-day Labor Day frame), finishing second behind newcomer "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings". In its third weekend the film grossed $4.8 million, finishing fourth.


title: Candyman (2021 film)

text: Worldwide, "Candyman" was released in 51 markets and made $5.23 million; the top countries were the United Kingdom ($1.48 million), Spain ($356,000), Mexico, Russia, and Germany.


title: Candyman (2021 film)

text: On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 72 out of 100 based on 54 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale, while PostTrak reported 72% of audience members gave it a positive score, with 56% saying they would definitely recommend it.


title: Candyman (2021 film)

text: Reviewing the film for "The New York Times", Manohla Dargis wrote that "DaCosta plays with perspective, shifting between Anthony's and the intersecting, sometimes colliding worlds of more-successful artists, urban-legend propagators and, touchingly, profoundly scarred children." She points to the interspersed bits of shadow puppetry as a reflexive writing device that emphasizes "Candyman" is fundamentally about storytelling, writing: "We tell some fictions to understand ourselves, to exist; others we tell to turn other human beings into monsters, to destroy." Odie Henderson, reviewing the film for "RogerEbert.com", praised DaCosta's visual style, writing that she "stages the kill scenes with a mix of pitch-black humor, misdirection, and clever framing, fully acknowledging that what you don't see—or think you saw—can be a lot worse than what you did see."


title: Candyman (2021 film)

text: In her review of "Candyman" for "The A.V. Club", Anya Stanley wrote that the film's various interests are "more than a 91-minute movie can adequately explore," but conceded "there are worse crimes for a movie to commit than having too many ideas." She explained: "Where Bernard Rose spoke on White anxieties and the image of the scary Black man in 1992, DaCosta expands the conversation, relocating the horror from one man to the many structures that foment brutality upon the Black populace."


title: Candyman (2021 film)

text: In her review for "Vulture", Angelica Jade Bastién called "Candyman" "the most disappointing film of the year so far," writing that it limns "not only the artistic failures of the individuals who ushered it to life, but the artistic failures of an entire industry that seeks to commodify Blackness to embolden its bottom line." Robert Daniels expressed similar disappointment with the film in his review for "Polygon", describing it as "cluttered, preachy, and not nearly scary enough." He took particular issue with the way the film fails to convey the geographical importance of Cabrini–Green, writing that the "lack of a visual metaphor makes the film's exploration of gentrification more of an assemblage of nonspecific dialogue. It talks about what gentrification is, and not what it looks like."


title: Candyman (2021 film)

text: David Rooney of "The Hollywood Reporter" wrote: "Director Nia DaCosta, working from a script she wrote with Jordan Peele and Win Rosenfeld, uses Bernard Rose's 1992 film as a jumping-off point for bone-chilling horror that expands provocatively on the urban legend of the first film within the context of Black folklore and history, as well as the distorting White narrative that turns Black victims into monsters." Reviewing the film for "TheWrap", Elizabeth Weitzman said: "DaCosta, Peele, and Rosenfeld are playing with us—the victim is rendered less sympathetically than Candyman—as much as they are with notions of history, culture, art and appropriation. They bring in actors from the first film (including Tony Todd and Vanessa Estelle Williams) but not always in ways we expect. They build on canon while simultaneously dismantling it." Aedan Juvet of "Screen Rant" also named the film: "The Most Rewatchable Horror Film of 2021"


title: Polar bear

text: The polar bear (Ursus maritimus) is a hypercarnivorous bear whose native range lies largely within the Arctic Circle, encompassing the Arctic Ocean, its surrounding seas and surrounding land masses. It is the largest extant bear species, as well as the largest extant land carnivore. A boar (adult male) weighs around , while a sow (adult female) is about half that size. Although it is the sister species of the brown bear, it has evolved to occupy a narrower ecological niche, with many body characteristics adapted for cold temperatures, for moving across snow, ice and open water, and for hunting seals, which make up most of its diet. Although most polar bears are born on land, they spend most of their time on the sea ice. Their scientific name means "maritime bear" and derives from this fact. Polar bears hunt their preferred food of seals from the edge of sea ice, often living off fat reserves when no sea ice is present. Because of their dependence on the sea ice, polar bears are classified as marine mammals.


title: Polar bear

text: Because of expected habitat loss caused by climate change, the polar bear is classified as a vulnerable species. For decades, large-scale hunting raised international concern for the future of the species, but populations rebounded after controls and quotas began to take effect. For thousands of years, the polar bear has been a key figure in the material, spiritual, and cultural life of circumpolar peoples, and polar bears remain important in their cultures. Historically, the polar bear has also been known as the "white bear". It is sometimes referred to as the "nanook", based on the Inuit term "nanuq".


title: Polar bear

text: Constantine John Phipps was the first to describe the polar bear as a distinct species in 1774 in his report about his 1773 expedition towards the North Pole. He chose the scientific name "Ursus maritimus", the Latin for "maritime bear", due to the animal's native habitat. The Inuit refer to the animal as "nanook" (transliterated as in the Inupiat language). The Yupik also refer to the bear as in Siberian Yupik. In the Chukotko-Kamchatkan languages of Alyutor and Koryak, the name of the polar bear is , while in the related Chukchi, it is . In Russian, it is usually called (, 'white bear'), though an older word still in use is (, which comes from the Komi , "bear"). In Quebec, the polar bear is referred to by the french terms ('white bear') or ('polar bear'). In Norwegian, one of the primary languages of the Svalbard archipelago, the polar bear is referred to as ('ice bear') or ('white bear').


title: Polar bear

text: The polar bear was previously considered to be in its own genus, "Thalarctos". However, evidence of hybrids between polar bears and brown bears, and of the recent evolutionary divergence of the two species, does not support the establishment of this separate genus, and the accepted scientific name is now therefore "Ursus maritimus", as Phipps originally proposed.


title: Polar bear

text: The bear family, Ursidae, is thought to have split from other carnivorans about 38 million years ago. The subfamily Ursinae originated approximately 4.2 million years ago. The oldest known polar bear fossil is a 130,000 to 110,000-year-old jaw bone, found on Prince Charles Foreland in 2004. Fossils show that between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago, the polar bear's molar teeth changed significantly from those of the brown bear. Polar bears are thought to have diverged from a population of brown bears that became isolated during a period of glaciation in the Pleistocene from the eastern part of Siberia (from Kamchatka and the Kolym Peninsula).


title: Polar bear

text: The evidence from DNA analysis is more complex. The mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) of the polar bear diverged from the brown bear, "Ursus arctos", roughly 150,000 years ago. Further, some clades of brown bear, as assessed by their mtDNA, were thought to be more closely related to polar bears than to other brown bears, meaning that the brown bear might not be considered a species under some species concepts, but paraphyletic. The mtDNA of extinct Irish brown bears is particularly close to polar bears. A comparison of the nuclear genome of polar bears with that of brown bears revealed a different pattern, the two forming genetically distinct clades that diverged approximately 603,000 years ago, although the latest research is based on analysis of the complete genomes (rather than just the mitochondria or partial nuclear genomes) of polar and brown bears, and establishes the divergence of polar and brown bears at 400,000 years ago.


title: Polar bear

text: However, the two species have mated intermittently for all that time, most likely coming into contact with each other during warming periods, when polar bears were driven onto land and brown bears migrated northward. Most brown bears have about 2 percent genetic material from polar bears, but one population, the ABC Islands bears, has between 5 percent and 10 percent polar bear genes, indicating more frequent and recent mating. Polar bears can breed with brown bears to produce fertile grizzly–polar bear hybrids; rather than indicating that they have only recently diverged, the new evidence suggests more frequent mating has continued over a longer period of time, and thus the two bears remain genetically similar. However, because neither species can survive long in the other's ecological niche, and because they have different morphology, metabolism, social and feeding behaviours, and other phenotypic characteristics, the two bears are generally classified as separate species.


title: Polar bear

text: When the polar bear was originally documented, two subspecies were identified: the American polar bear ("Ursus maritimus maritimus") by Constantine J. Phipps in 1774, and the Siberian polar bear ("Ursus maritimus marinus") by Peter Simon Pallas in 1776. This distinction has since been invalidated. One alleged fossil subspecies has been identified: "Ursus maritimus tyrannus", which became extinct during the Pleistocene. "U.m. tyrannus" was significantly larger than the living subspecies. However, recent reanalysis of the fossil suggests that it was actually a brown bear.


title: Polar bear

text: The polar bear is found in the Arctic Circle and adjacent land masses as far south as Newfoundland. Due to the absence of human development in its remote habitat, it retains more of its original range than any other extant carnivore. While they are rare north of 88°, there is evidence that they range all the way across the Arctic, and as far south as James Bay in Canada. Their southernmost range is near the boundary between the subarctic and humid continental climate zones. They can occasionally drift widely with the sea ice, and there have been anecdotal sightings as far south as Berlevåg on the Norwegian mainland and the Kuril Islands in the Sea of Okhotsk. It is difficult to estimate a global population of polar bears as much of the range has been poorly studied; however, biologists use a working estimate of about 20–25,000 or 22–31,000 polar bears worldwide.


title: Polar bear

text: With the discovery of a southeast Greenland population in 2022, there are 20 generally recognized, discrete subpopulations of polar bears. The subpopulations display seasonal fidelity to particular areas, but DNA studies show that they are not reproductively isolated. The 14 North American subpopulations range from the Beaufort Sea south to Hudson Bay and east to eastern Greenland and account for about 54% of the global population.


title: Polar bear

text: The usual range includes the territory of five nations: Denmark (Greenland), Norway (Svalbard), Russia, the United States (Alaska) and Canada. These five nations are the signatories of the International Agreement on the Conservation of Polar Bears, which mandates cooperation on research and conservation efforts throughout the polar bear's range. Bears sometimes swim to Iceland from Greenland—about 600 sightings since the country's settlement in the 9th century, and five in the 21st century —and are always killed because of their danger, as well as the cost and difficulty of repatriation.


title: Polar bear

text: Modern methods of tracking polar bear populations have been implemented only since the mid-1980s, and are expensive to perform consistently over a large area. The most accurate counts require flying a helicopter in the Arctic climate to find polar bears, shooting a tranquilizer dart at the bear to sedate it, and then tagging the bear. In Nunavut, some Inuit have reported increases in bear sightings around human settlements in recent years, leading to a belief that populations are increasing. Scientists have responded by noting that hungry bears may be congregating around human settlements, leading to the illusion that populations are higher than they actually are. The Polar Bear Specialist Group of the IUCN Species Survival Commission takes the position that "estimates of subpopulation size or sustainable harvest levels should not be made solely on the basis of traditional ecological knowledge without supporting scientific studies."


title: Polar bear

text: Of the 19 polar bear subpopulations recognized in 2017, one was in decline, two were increasing, seven were stable, and nine had insufficient data.


title: Polar bear

text: The polar bear is a marine mammal because it spends many months of the year at sea. However, it is the only living marine mammal with powerful, large limbs and feet that allow them to cover kilometres on foot and run on land. Its preferred habitat is the annual sea ice covering the waters over the continental shelf and the Arctic inter-island archipelagos. These areas, known as the "Arctic ring of life", have high biological productivity in comparison to the deep waters of the high Arctic. The polar bear tends to frequent areas where sea ice meets water, such as polynyas and leads (temporary stretches of open water in Arctic ice), to hunt the seals that make up most of its diet. Freshwater is limited in these environments because it is either locked up in snow or saline. Polar bears are able to produce water through the metabolism of fats found in seal blubber, and are therefore found primarily along the perimeter of the polar ice pack, rather than in the Polar Basin close to the North Pole where the density of seals is low.


title: Polar bear

text: Annual ice contains areas of water that appear and disappear throughout the year as the weather changes. Seals migrate in response to these changes, and polar bears must follow their prey. In Hudson Bay, James Bay, and some other areas, the ice melts completely each summer (an event often referred to as "ice-floe breakup"), forcing polar bears to go onto land and wait through the months until the next freeze-up. In the Chukchi and Beaufort seas, most polar bears retreat each summer to the ice further north that remains frozen year-round, though a large portion of the population (15–40%) has been observed spending all summer on land every year in these areas since the 1980s.


title: Polar bear

text: The only other bear of comparable size to the polar bear is the Kodiak bear, which is a subspecies of brown bear. Adult male polar bears weigh and measure in total length. Around the Beaufort Sea, however, mature males reportedly average . Adult females are roughly half the size of males and normally weigh , measuring in length. Elsewhere, a slightly larger estimated average weight of was claimed for adult females. When pregnant, however, females can weigh as much as . The polar bear is among the most sexually dimorphic of mammals, surpassed only by the pinnipeds such as elephant seals. The largest polar bear on record, reportedly weighing , was a male shot at Kotzebue Sound in northwestern Alaska in 1960. This specimen, when mounted, stood tall on its hindlegs. The shoulder height of an adult polar bear is . While all bears are short-tailed, the polar bear's tail is relatively the shortest amongst living bears, ranging from in length.


title: Polar bear

text: Compared with its closest relative, the brown bear, the polar bear has a more elongated body build and a longer skull and nose. As predicted by Allen's rule for a northerly animal, the legs are stocky and the ears and tail are small. However, the feet are very large to distribute load when walking on snow or thin ice and to provide propulsion when swimming; they may measure across in an adult. The pads of the paws are covered with small, soft papillae (dermal bumps), which provide traction on the ice. The polar bear's claws are short and stocky compared to those of the brown bear, perhaps to serve the former's need to grip heavy prey and ice. The claws are deeply scooped on the underside which assists in digging in the ice of the natural habitat. Research of injury patterns in polar bear forelimbs found injuries to the right forelimb to be more frequent than those to the left, suggesting, perhaps, right-handedness. Unlike the brown bear, polar bears in captivity are rarely overweight or particularly large, possibly as a reaction to the warm conditions of most zoos.


title: Polar bear

text: The 42 teeth of a polar bear reflect its highly carnivorous diet. The cheek teeth are smaller and more jagged than in the brown bear, and the canines are larger and sharper. The dental formula is .


title: Polar bear

text: Polar bears are superbly insulated by up to of adipose tissue, their hide and their fur. Polar bear fur consists of a layer of dense underfur and an outer layer of guard hairs, which appear white to tan but are actually transparent. Two genes that are known to influence melanin production, LYST and AIM1, are both mutated in polar bears, possibly leading to the absence on this pigment in their fur. The guard hair is over most of the body. Polar bears gradually moult from May to August, but, unlike other Arctic mammals, they do not shed their coat for a darker shade to provide camouflage in summer conditions. The hollow guard hairs of a polar bear coat were once thought to act as fiber-optic tubes to conduct light to its black skin, where it could be absorbed; however, this hypothesis was disproved by a study in 1998.


title: Polar bear

text: The white coat usually yellows with age. When kept in captivity in warm, humid conditions, the fur may turn a pale shade of green due to algae growing inside the guard hairs. Males have significantly longer hairs on their forelegs, which increase in length until the bear reaches 14 years of age. The male's ornamental foreleg hair is thought to attract females, serving a similar function to the lion's mane.


title: Polar bear

text: The polar bear has an extremely well developed sense of smell, being able to detect seals nearly away and buried under of snow. Its hearing is about as acute as that of a human, and its vision is also good at long distances.


title: Polar bear

text: The polar bear is an excellent swimmer and often will swim for days. One bear swam continuously for 9 days in the frigid Bering Sea for to reach ice far from land. She then travelled another . During the swim, the bear lost 22% of her body mass and her yearling cub died. With its body fat providing buoyancy, the bear swims in a dog paddle fashion using its large forepaws for propulsion. Polar bears can swim at . When walking, the polar bear tends to have a lumbering gait and maintains an average speed of around . When sprinting, they can reach up to .


title: Polar bear

text: Unlike brown bears, polar bears are not territorial. Although stereotyped as being voraciously aggressive, they are normally cautious in confrontations, and often choose to escape rather than fight. Satiated polar bears rarely attack humans unless severely provoked. However, due to their lack of prior human interaction, hungry polar bears are extremely unpredictable, fearless towards people and are known to kill and sometimes eat humans. Many attacks by brown bears are the result of surprising the animal, which is not the case with the polar bear. Polar bears are stealth hunters, and the victim is often unaware of the bear's presence until the attack is underway. Whereas brown bears often maul a person and then leave, polar bear attacks are more likely to be predatory and are almost always fatal. However, due to the very small human population around the Arctic, such attacks are rare. Michio Hoshino, a Japanese wildlife photographer, was once pursued briefly by a hungry male polar bear in northern Alaska. According to Hoshino, the bear started running but Hoshino made it to his truck. The bear was able to reach the truck and tore one of the doors off the truck before Hoshino was able to drive off.


title: Polar bear

text: In general, adult polar bears live solitary lives. Yet, they have often been seen playing together for hours at a time and even sleeping in an embrace, and polar bear zoologist Nikita Ovsianikov has described adult males as having "well-developed friendships." Cubs are especially playful as well. Among young males in particular, play-fighting may be a means of practicing for serious competition during mating seasons later in life. Polar bears are usually quiet but do communicate with various sounds and vocalizations. Females communicate with their young with moans and chuffs, and the distress calls of both cubs and subadults consists of bleats. Cubs may hum while nursing. When nervous, bears produce huffs, chuffs and snorts while hisses, growls and roars are signs of aggression. Chemical communication can also be important: bears leave behind their scent in their tracks which allow individuals to keep track of one another in the vast Arctic wilderness.


title: Polar bear

text: In 1992, a photographer near Churchill took a now widely circulated set of photographs of a polar bear playing with a Canadian Eskimo Dog ("Canis familiaris") a tenth of its size. The pair wrestled harmlessly together each afternoon for 10 days in a row for no apparent reason, although the bear may have been trying to demonstrate its friendliness in the hope of sharing the kennel's food. This kind of social interaction is uncommon; it is far more typical for polar bears to behave aggressively towards dogs.


title: Polar bear

text: The polar bear is the most carnivorous member of the bear family, and throughout most of its range, its diet primarily consists of ringed ("Pusa hispida") and bearded seals ("Erignathus barbatus"). The Arctic is home to millions of seals, which become prey when they surface in holes in the ice in order to breathe, or when they haul out on the ice to rest. Polar bears hunt primarily at the interface between ice, water, and air; they only rarely catch seals on land or in open water.


title: Polar bear

text: The polar bear's most common hunting method is called "still-hunting": the bear uses its excellent sense of smell to locate a seal breathing hole, and crouches nearby in silence for a seal to appear. The bear may lie in wait for several hours. When the seal exhales, the bear smells its breath, reaches into the hole with a forepaw, and drags it out onto the ice. The polar bear kills the seal by biting its head to crush its skull. The polar bear also hunts by stalking seals resting on the ice: upon spotting a seal, it walks to within , and then crouches. If the seal does not notice, the bear creeps to within of the seal and then suddenly rushes forth to attack. A third hunting method is to raid the birth lairs that female seals create in the snow.


title: Polar bear

text: A widespread legend tells that polar bears cover their black noses with their paws when hunting. This behaviour, if it happens, is rare – although the story exists in the oral history of northern peoples and in accounts by early Arctic explorers, there is no record of an eyewitness account of the behaviour in recent decades.


title: Polar bear

text: Mature bears tend to eat only the calorie-rich skin and blubber of the seal, which are highly digestible, whereas younger bears consume the protein-rich red meat. Studies have also photographed polar bears scaling near-vertical cliffs, to eat birds' chicks and eggs. For subadult bears, which are independent of their mother but have not yet gained enough experience and body size to successfully hunt seals, scavenging the carcasses from other bears' kills is an important source of nutrition. Subadults may also be forced to accept a half-eaten carcass if they kill a seal but cannot defend it from larger polar bears. After feeding, polar bears wash themselves with water or snow.


title: Polar bear

text: Although polar bears are extraordinarily powerful, its primary prey species, the ringed seal, is much smaller than itself, and many of the seals hunted are pups rather than adults. Ringed seals are born weighing and grown to an estimated average weight of only . They also in places prey heavily upon the harp seal ("Pagophilus groenlandicus"), the harbour seal ("Phoca vitulina"), or the hooded seal ("Cystophora cristata"). The bearded seal, on the other hand, can be nearly the same size as the bear itself, averaging . Adult male bearded seals, at are too large for a female bear to overtake, and so are potential prey only for mature male bears. Large males also occasionally attempt to hunt and kill even larger prey items. It can kill an adult walrus ("Odobenus rosmarus"), although this is rarely attempted. At up to and a typical adult mass range of , a walrus can be more than twice the bear's weight, has extremely thick skin and has up to -long ivory tusks that can be used as formidable weapons. A polar bear may charge a group of walruses, with the goal of separating a young, infirm, or injured walrus from the pod. They will even attack adult walruses when their diving holes have frozen over or intercept them before they can get back to the diving hole in the ice. Yet, polar bears will very seldom attack full-grown adult walruses, with the largest male walrus probably invulnerable unless otherwise injured or incapacitated. Since an attack on a walrus tends to be an extremely protracted and exhausting venture, bears have been known to back down from the attack after making the initial injury to the walrus. Polar bears have also been seen to prey on beluga whales ("Delphinapterus leucas") and narwhals ("Monodon monoceros"), by swiping at them at breathing holes. The whales are of similar size to the walrus and nearly as difficult for the bear to subdue. Most terrestrial animals in the Arctic can outrun the polar bear on land as polar bears overheat quickly, and most marine animals the bear encounters can outswim it. In some areas, the polar bear's diet is supplemented by walrus calves and by the carcasses of dead adult walruses or whales, whose blubber is readily devoured even when rotten. Polar bears sometimes swim underwater to catch fish like the Arctic charr or the fourhorn sculpin.


title: Polar bear

text: With the exception of pregnant females, polar bears are active year-round, although they have a vestigial hibernation induction trigger in their blood. Unlike brown and black bears, polar bears are capable of fasting for up to several months during late summer and early fall, when they cannot hunt for seals because the sea is unfrozen. When sea ice is unavailable during summer and early autumn, some populations live off fat reserves for months at a time, as polar bears do not 'hibernate' any time of the year.


title: Polar bear

text: Being both curious animals and scavengers, polar bears investigate and consume garbage where they come into contact with humans. Polar bears may attempt to consume almost anything they can find, including hazardous substances such as styrofoam, plastic, car batteries, ethylene glycol, hydraulic fluid, and motor oil. The dump in Churchill, Manitoba was closed in 2006 to protect bears, and waste is now recycled or transported to Thompson, Manitoba.


title: Polar bear

text: Although seal predation is the primary and an indispensable way of life for most polar bears, when alternatives are present they are quite flexible. Polar bears consume a wide variety of other wild foods, including muskox ("Ovibos moschatus"), reindeer ("Rangifer tarandus"), birds, eggs, rodents, crabs, other crustaceans, fish and other polar bears. They may also eat plants, including berries, roots, and kelp; however, none of these have been a significant part of their diet, except for beachcast marine mammal carcasses. Given the change in climate, with ice breaking up in areas such as the Hudson Bay earlier than it used to, polar bears are exploiting food resources such as snow geese and eggs, and plants such as lyme grass in increased quantities.


title: Polar bear

text: When stalking land animals, such as muskox, reindeer, and even willow ptarmigan ("Lagopus lagopus"), polar bears appear to make use of vegetative cover and wind direction to bring them as close to their prey as possible before attacking. Polar bears have been observed to hunt the small Svalbard reindeer ("R. t. platyrhynchus"), which weigh only as adults, as well as the barren-ground caribou ("R. t. groenlandicus"), which is about twice as heavy as the former. Adult muskox, which can weigh or more, are a more formidable quarry. Although ungulates are not typical prey, the killing of one during the summer months can greatly increase the odds of survival during that lean period. Like the brown bear, most ungulate prey of polar bears is likely to be young, sickly or injured specimens rather than healthy adults. The polar bear's metabolism is specialized to require large amounts of fat from marine mammals, and it cannot derive sufficient caloric intake from terrestrial food.


title: Polar bear

text: In their southern range, especially near Hudson Bay and James Bay, Canadian polar bears endure all summer without sea ice to hunt from. Here, their food ecology shows their dietary flexibility. They still manage to consume some seals, but they are food-deprived in summer as only marine mammal carcasses are an important alternative without sea ice, especially carcasses of the beluga whale. These alternatives may reduce the rate of weight loss of bears when on land. One scientist found that 71% of the Hudson Bay bears had fed on seaweed (marine algae) and that about half were feeding on birds such as the dovekie and sea ducks, especially the long-tailed duck (53%) and common eider, by swimming underwater to catch them. They were also diving to feed on blue mussels and other underwater food sources like the green sea urchin. 24% had eaten moss recently, 19% had consumed grass, 34% had eaten black crowberry and about half had consumed willows. This study illustrates the polar bear's dietary flexibility but it does not represent its life history elsewhere. Most polar bears elsewhere will never have access to these alternatives, except for the marine mammal carcasses that are important wherever they occur.


title: Polar bear

text: In Svalbard, polar bears were observed to kill white-beaked dolphins during spring, when the dolphins were trapped in the sea ice. The bears then proceeded to cache the carcasses, which remained and were eaten during the ice-free summer and autumn.


title: Polar bear

text: Courtship and mating take place on the sea ice in April and May, when polar bears congregate in the best seal hunting areas. A male may follow the tracks of a breeding female for or more, and after finding her engage in intense fighting with other males over mating rights, fights that often result in scars and broken teeth. Polar bears have a generally polygynous mating system; recent genetic testing of mothers and cubs, however, has uncovered cases of litters in which cubs have different fathers. Partners stay together and mate repeatedly for an entire week; the mating ritual induces ovulation in the female.


title: Polar bear

text: After mating, the fertilized egg remains in a suspended state until August or September. During these four months, the pregnant female eats prodigious amounts of food, gaining at least and often more than doubling her body weight.


title: Polar bear

text: When the ice floes are at their minimum in the fall, ending the possibility of hunting, each pregnant female digs a "maternity den" consisting of a narrow entrance tunnel leading to one to three chambers. Most maternity dens are in snowdrifts, but may also be made underground in permafrost if it is not sufficiently cold yet for snow. In most subpopulations, maternity dens are situated on land a few kilometres from the coast, and the individuals in a subpopulation tend to reuse the same denning areas each year. The polar bears that do not den on land make their dens on the sea ice. In the den, she enters a dormant state similar to hibernation. This hibernation-like state does not consist of continuous sleeping; however, the bear's heart rate slows from 46 to 27 beats per minute. Her body temperature does not decrease during this period as it would for a typical mammal in hibernation.


title: Polar bear

text: Between November and February, cubs are born blind, covered with a light down fur, and weighing less than , but in captivity they might be delivered in the earlier months. The earliest recorded birth of polar bears in captivity was on 11 October 2011 in the Toronto Zoo. On average, each litter has two cubs. The family remains in the den until mid-February to mid-April, with the mother maintaining her fast while nursing her cubs on a fat-rich milk. By the time the mother breaks open the entrance to the den, her cubs weigh about . For about 12 to 15 days, the family spends time outside the den while remaining in its vicinity, the mother grazing on vegetation while the cubs become used to walking and playing. Then they begin the long walk from the denning area to the sea ice, where the mother can once again catch seals. Depending on the timing of ice-floe breakup in the fall, she may have fasted for up to eight months. During this time, cubs playfully imitate the mother's hunting methods in preparation for later life.


title: Polar bear

text: Female polar bears have been known to adopt other cubs. Multiple cases of adoption of wild cubs have been confirmed by genetic testing. Adult bears of either sex occasionally kill and eat polar bear cubs. As of 2006, in Alaska, 42% of cubs were reaching 12 months of age, down from 65% in 1991. In most areas, cubs are weaned at two and a half years of age, when the mother chases them away or abandons them. The Western Hudson Bay subpopulation is unusual in that its female polar bears sometimes wean their cubs at only one and a half years. This was the case for 40% of cubs there in the early 1980s; however by the 1990s, fewer than 20% of cubs were weaned this young. After the mother leaves, sibling cubs sometimes travel and share food together for weeks or months.


title: Polar bear

text: Females begin to breed at the age of four years in most areas, and five years in the area of the Beaufort Sea. Males usually reach sexual maturity at six years; however, as competition for females is fierce, many do not breed until the age of eight or ten. A study in Hudson Bay indicated that both the reproductive success and the maternal weight of females peaked in their mid-teens. Maternal success appeared to decline after this point, possibly because of an age-related impairment in the ability to store the fat necessary to rear cubs.


title: Polar bear

text: Polar bears appear to be less affected by infectious diseases and parasites than most terrestrial mammals. Polar bears are especially susceptible to "Trichinella", a parasitic roundworm they contract through cannibalism, although infections are usually not fatal. Only one case of a polar bear with rabies has been documented, even though polar bears frequently interact with Arctic foxes, which often carry rabies. Bacterial leptospirosis and "Morbillivirus" have been recorded. Polar bears sometimes have problems with various skin diseases that may be caused by mites or other parasites.


title: Polar bear

text: Polar bears rarely live beyond 25 years. The oldest wild bears on record died at age 32, whereas the oldest captive was a female who died in 1991, age 43. The causes of death in wild adult polar bears are poorly understood, as carcasses are rarely found in the species's frigid habitat. In the wild, old polar bears eventually become too weak to catch food, and gradually starve to death. Polar bears injured in fights or accidents may either die from their injuries, or become unable to hunt effectively, leading to starvation.


title: Polar bear

text: The polar bear is the apex predator within its range, and is a keystone species for the Arctic. Several animal species, particularly Arctic foxes ("Vulpes lagopus") and glaucous gulls ("Larus hyperboreus"), routinely scavenge polar bear kills.


title: Polar bear

text: The relationship between ringed seals and polar bears is so close that the abundance of ringed seals in some areas appears to regulate the density of polar bears, while polar bear predation in turn regulates density and reproductive success of ringed seals. The evolutionary pressure of polar bear predation on seals probably accounts for some significant differences between Arctic and Antarctic seals. Compared to the Antarctic, where there is no major surface predator, Arctic seals use more breathing holes per individual, appear more restless when hauled out on the ice, and rarely defecate on the ice. The baby fur of most Arctic seal species is white, presumably to provide camouflage from predators, whereas Antarctic seals all have dark fur at birth.


title: Polar bear

text: Brown bears tend to dominate polar bears in disputes over carcasses, and dead polar bear cubs have been found in brown bear dens. Wolves are rarely encountered by polar bears, though there are two records of Arctic wolf ("Canis lupus arctos") packs killing polar bear cubs. Adult polar bears are occasionally vulnerable to predation by orcas ("Orcinus orca") while swimming, but they are rarely reported as taken and bears are likely to avoid entering the water if possible if they detect an orca pod in the area. The melting sea ice in the Arctic may be causing an increase of orcas in the Arctic sea, which may increase the risk of predation on polar bears but also may benefit the bears by providing more whale carcasses that they can scavenge. The remains of polar bears have been found in the stomachs of large Greenland sharks ("Somniosus microcephalus"), although it certainly cannot be ruled out that the bears were merely scavenged by this slow-moving, unusual shark. A rather unlikely killer of a grown polar bear has reportedly included a wolverine ("Gulo gulo"), anecdotally reported to have suffocated a bear in a zoo with a bite to the throat during a conflict. This report may well be dubious, however. Polar bears are sometimes the host of arctic mites such as "Alaskozetes antarcticus".


title: Polar bear

text: Researchers tracked 52 sows in the southern Beaufort Sea off Alaska with GPS system collars; no boars were involved in the study due to males' necks being too thick for the GPS-equipped collars. Fifty long-distance swims were recorded; the longest at , with an average of . The length of these swims ranged from most of a day to ten days. Ten of the sows had a cub swim with them and after a year, six cubs survived. The study did not determine if the others lost their cubs before, during, or some time after their long swims. Researchers do not know whether or not this is a new behaviour; before polar ice shrinkage, they opined that there was probably neither the need nor opportunity to swim such long distances. As noted above, there have been 600 recorded instances of polar bears in Iceland since the 9th century. These presumably swam from Greenland, about .


title: Polar bear

text: The polar bear may swim underwater for up to three minutes to approach seals on shore or on ice floes.


title: Polar bear

text: Polar bears have long provided important raw materials for Arctic peoples, including the Inuit, Yupik, Chukchi, Nenets, Russian Pomors and others. Hunters commonly used teams of dogs to distract the bear, allowing the hunter to spear the bear or shoot it with arrows at closer range. Almost all parts of captured animals had a use. The fur was used in particular to make trousers and, by the Nenets, to make galoshes-like outer footwear called ; the meat is edible, despite some risk of trichinosis; the fat was used in food and as a fuel for lighting homes, alongside seal and whale blubber; sinews were used as thread for sewing clothes; the gallbladder and sometimes heart were dried and powdered for medicinal purposes; the large canine teeth were highly valued as talismans. Only the liver was not used, as its high concentration of vitamin A is poisonous. As a carnivore, which feeds largely upon fish-eating carnivores, the polar bear ingests large amounts of vitamin A that is stored in their livers. The resulting high concentrations cause hypervitaminosis A, Hunters make sure to either toss the liver into the sea or bury it in order to spare their dogs from potential poisoning. Traditional subsistence hunting was on a small enough scale to not significantly affect polar bear populations, mostly because of the sparseness of the human population in polar bear habitat.


title: Polar bear

text: In Russia, polar bear furs were already being commercially traded in the 14th century, though it was of low value compared to Arctic fox or even reindeer fur. The growth of the human population in the Eurasian Arctic in the 16th and 17th century, together with the advent of firearms and increasing trade, dramatically increased the harvest of polar bears. However, since polar bear fur has always played a marginal commercial role, data on the historical harvest is fragmentary. It is known, for example, that already in the winter of 1784/1785 Russian Pomors on Spitsbergen harvested 150 polar bears in Magdalenefjorden. In the early 20th century, Norwegian hunters were harvesting 300 bears per year at the same location. Estimates of total historical harvest suggest that from the beginning of the 18th century, roughly 400 to 500 animals were being harvested annually in northern Eurasia, reaching a peak of 1,300 to 1,500 animals in the early 20th century, and falling off as the numbers began dwindling.


title: Polar bear

text: In the first half of the 20th century, mechanized and overpoweringly efficient methods of hunting and trapping came into use in North America as well. Polar bears were chased from snowmobiles, icebreakers, and airplanes, the latter practice described in a 1965 "New York Times" editorial as being "about as sporting as machine gunning a cow." Norwegians used "self-killing guns", comprising a loaded rifle in a baited box that was placed at the level of a bear's head, and which fired when the string attached to the bait was pulled. The numbers taken grew rapidly in the 1960s, peaking around 1968 with a global total of 1,250 bears that year.


title: Polar bear

text: Concerns over the future survival of the species led to the development of national regulations on polar bear hunting, beginning in the mid-1950s. The Soviet Union banned all hunting in 1956. Canada began imposing hunting quotas in 1968. Norway passed a series of increasingly strict regulations from 1965 to 1973, and has completely banned hunting since then. The United States began regulating hunting in 1971 and adopted the Marine Mammal Protection Act in 1972. In 1973, the International Agreement on the Conservation of Polar Bears was signed by all five nations whose territory is inhabited by polar bears: Canada, Denmark, Norway, the Soviet Union, and the United States. Member countries agreed to place restrictions on recreational and commercial hunting, ban hunting from aircraft and icebreakers, and conduct further research. The treaty allows hunting "by local people using traditional methods". Norway is the only country of the five in which all harvest of polar bears is banned. The agreement was a rare case of international cooperation during the Cold War. Biologist Ian Stirling commented, "For many years, the conservation of polar bears was the only subject in the entire Arctic that nations from both sides of the Iron Curtain could agree upon sufficiently to sign an agreement. Such was the intensity of human fascination with this magnificent predator, the only marine bear."


title: Polar bear

text: Agreements have been made between countries to co-manage their shared polar bear subpopulations. After several years of negotiations, Russia and the United States signed an agreement in October 2000 to jointly set quotas for indigenous subsistence hunting in Alaska and Chukotka. The treaty was ratified in October 2007. In September 2015, the polar bear range states agreed upon a "circumpolar action plan" describing their conservation strategy for polar bears.


title: Polar bear

text: The species is listed in Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) meaning international trade, including in parts or derivatives, is controlled by the CITES system of permits and certificates. The United States government has proposed that polar bears be transferred to Appendix I of CITES which would ban all commercial international trade in polar bear parts. The decision to leave the species listed under Appendix II was endorsed by the IUCN and TRAFFIC, who determined that such an uplisting was unlikely to confer a conservation benefit.


title: Polar bear

text: Polar bears were designated "Not at Risk" in April 1986 and uplisted to "Special Concern" in April 1991. This status was re-evaluated and confirmed in April 1999, November 2002, and April 2008. Polar bears continue to be listed as a species of special concern in Canada because of their sensitivity to overharvest and because of an expected range contraction caused by loss of Arctic sea ice.


title: Polar bear

text: More than 600 bears are killed per year by humans across Canada, a rate calculated by scientists to be unsustainable for some areas, notably Baffin Bay. Canada has allowed sport hunters accompanied by local guides and dog-sled teams since 1970, but the practice was not common until the 1980s. The guiding of sport hunters provides meaningful employment and an important source of income for northern communities in which economic opportunities are few. Sport hunting can bring CDN$20,000 to $35,000 per bear into northern communities, which until recently has been mostly from American hunters.


title: Polar bear

text: The territory of Nunavut accounts for the location 80% of annual kills in Canada. In 2005, the government of Nunavut increased the quota from 400 to 518 bears, despite protests from the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group. In two areas where harvest levels have been increased based on increased sightings, science-based studies have indicated declining populations, and a third area is considered data-deficient. While most of that quota is hunted by the indigenous Inuit, a growing share is sold to recreational hunters. (0.8% in the 1970s, 7.1% in the 1980s, and 14.6% in the 1990s) Nunavut polar bear biologist, Mitchell Taylor, who was formerly responsible for polar bear conservation in the territory, has insisted that bear numbers are being sustained under current hunting limits. In 2010, the 2005 increase was partially reversed. Government of Nunavut officials announced that the polar bear quota for the Baffin Bay region would be gradually reduced from 105 per year to 65 by 2013. The Government of the Northwest Territories maintain their own quota of 72 to 103 bears within the Inuvialuit communities of which some are set aside for sports hunters. Environment Canada also banned the export from Canada of fur, claws, skulls and other products from polar bears harvested in Baffin Bay as of 1 January 2010.


title: Polar bear

text: Because of the way polar bear hunting quotas are managed in Canada, attempts to discourage sport hunting would actually increase the number of bears killed in the short term. Canada allocates a certain number of permits each year to sport and subsistence hunting, and those that are not used for sport hunting are re-allocated to indigenous subsistence hunting. Whereas northern communities kill all the polar bears they are permitted to take each year, only half of sport hunters with permits actually manage to kill a polar bear. If a sport hunter does not kill a polar bear before his or her permit expires, the permit cannot be transferred to another hunter.


title: Polar bear

text: In Greenland, hunting restrictions were first introduced in 1994 and expanded by executive order in 2005. Until 2005 Greenland placed no limit on hunting by indigenous people. However, in 2006 it imposed a limit of 150, while also allowed recreational hunting for the first time. Other provisions included year-round protection of cubs and mothers, restrictions on weapons used and various administrative requirements to catalogue kills.


title: Polar bear

text: Polar bears were hunted heavily in Svalbard, Norway throughout the 19th century and to as recently as 1973, when the conservation treaty was signed. 900 bears a year were harvested in the 1920s and after World War II, there were as many as 400–500 harvested annually. Some regulations of hunting did exist. In 1927, poisoning was outlawed while in 1939, certain denning sights were declared off limits. The killing of females and cubs was made illegal in 1965. Killing of polar bears decreased somewhat 25–30 years before the treaty. Despite this, the polar bear population continued to decline and by 1973, only around 1000 bears were left in Svalbard. Only with the passage of the treaty did they begin to recover.


title: Polar bear

text: The Soviet Union banned the harvest of polar bears in 1956; however, poaching continued, and is estimated to pose a serious threat to the polar bear population. In recent years, polar bears have approached coastal villages in Chukotka more frequently due to the shrinking of the sea ice, endangering humans and raising concerns that illegal hunting would become even more prevalent. In 2007, the Russian government made subsistence hunting legal for indigenous Chukotkan peoples only, a move supported by Russia's most prominent bear researchers and the World Wide Fund for Nature as a means to curb poaching.


title: Polar bear

text: Polar bears are currently listed as "Rare", of "Uncertain Status", or "Rehabilitated and rehabilitating" in the Red Data Book of Russia, depending on population. In 2010, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment published a strategy for polar bear conservation in Russia.


title: Polar bear

text: The Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 afforded polar bears some protection in the United States. It banned hunting (except by indigenous subsistence hunters), banned importing of polar bear parts (except polar bear pelts taken legally in Canada), and banned the harassment of polar bears. On 15 May 2008, the United States Department of the Interior listed the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act, citing the melting of Arctic sea ice as the primary threat to the polar bear. It banned all importing of polar bear trophies. Importing products made from polar bears had been prohibited from 1972 to 1994 under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, and restricted between 1994 and 2008. Under those restrictions, permits from the United States Fish and Wildlife Service were required to import sport-hunted polar bear trophies taken in hunting expeditions in Canada. The permit process required that the bear be taken from an area with quotas based on sound management principles. Since 1994, hundreds of sport-hunted polar bear trophies have been imported into the U.S. In 2015, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service published a draft conservation management plan for polar bears to improve their status under the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act.


title: Polar bear

text: Polar bear population sizes and trends are difficult to estimate accurately because they occupy remote home ranges and exist at low population densities. Polar bear fieldwork can also be hazardous to researchers. As of 2015, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) reports that the global population of polar bears is 22,000 to 31,000, and the current population trend is unknown. Nevertheless, polar bears are listed as "Vulnerable" under criterion A3c, which indicates an expected population decrease of ≥30% over the next three generations (~34.5 years) due to "decline in area of occupancy, extent of occurrence and/or quality of habitat". Risks to the polar bear include climate change, pollution in the form of toxic contaminants, conflicts with shipping, oil and gas exploration and development, and human-bear interactions including harvesting and possible stresses from recreational polar-bear watching.


title: Polar bear

text: According to the World Wildlife Fund, the polar bear is important as an indicator of Arctic ecosystem health. Polar bears are studied to gain understanding of what is happening throughout the Arctic, because at-risk polar bears are often a sign of something wrong with the Arctic marine ecosystem.


title: Polar bear

text: The key danger for polar bears posed by the effects of climate change is malnutrition or starvation due to habitat loss. Polar bears hunt seals from a platform of sea ice. Rising temperatures cause the sea ice to melt earlier in the year, driving the bears to shore before they have built sufficient fat reserves to survive the period of scarce food in the late summer and early fall. Reduction in sea-ice cover also forces bears to swim longer distances, which further depletes their energy stores and occasionally leads to drowning. Thinner sea ice tends to deform more easily, which appears to make it more difficult for polar bears to access seals. Insufficient nourishment leads to lower reproductive rates in adult females and lower survival rates in cubs and juvenile bears, in addition to poorer body condition in bears of all ages.


title: Polar bear

text: The International Union for Conservation of Nature, Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, United States Geological Survey and many leading polar bear biologists have expressed grave concerns about the impact of climate change, with some predicting extinction by 2100.


title: Polar bear

text: In addition to creating nutritional stress, a warming climate is expected to affect various other aspects of polar bear life: changes in sea ice affect the ability of pregnant females to build suitable maternity dens. As the distance increases between the pack ice and the coast, females must swim longer distances to reach favoured denning areas on land. Thawing of permafrost would affect the bears who traditionally den underground, and warm winters could result in den roofs collapsing or having reduced insulative value. For the polar bears that currently den on multi-year ice, increased ice mobility may result in longer distances for mothers and young cubs to walk when they return to seal-hunting areas in the spring. Disease-causing bacteria and parasites would flourish more readily in a warmer climate.


title: Polar bear

text: Problematic interactions between polar bears and humans, such as foraging by bears in garbage dumps, have historically been more prevalent in years when ice-floe breakup occurred early and local polar bears were relatively thin. Increased human-bear interactions, including fatal attacks on humans, are likely to increase as the sea ice shrinks and hungry bears try to find food on land.


title: Polar bear

text: The effects of climate change are most profound in the southern part of the polar bear's range, and this is indeed where significant degradation of local populations has been observed. The Western Hudson Bay subpopulation, in a southern part of the range, also happens to be one of the best-studied polar bear subpopulations. This subpopulation feeds heavily on ringed seals in late spring, when newly weaned and easily hunted seal pups are abundant. The late spring hunting season ends for polar bears when the ice begins to melt and break up, and they fast or eat little during the summer until the sea freezes again.


title: Polar bear

text: Due to warming air temperatures, ice-floe breakup in western Hudson Bay is currently occurring three weeks earlier than it did 30 years ago, reducing the duration of the polar bear feeding season. The body condition of polar bears has declined during this period; the average weight of lone (and likely pregnant) female polar bears was approximately in 1980 and in 2004. Between 1987 and 2004, the Western Hudson Bay population declined by 22%, although the population was listed as "stable" as of 2017. As the climate change melts sea ice, the U.S. Geological Survey projects that two-thirds of polar bears will disappear by 2050.


title: Polar bear

text: In Alaska, the effects of sea ice shrinkage have contributed to higher mortality rates in polar bear cubs, and have led to changes in the denning locations of pregnant females. The proportion of maternity dens on sea ice has changed from 62% between the years 1985 through 1994, to 37% over the years 1998 through 2004. Thus, now the Alaskan population more resembles the world population in that it is more likely to den on land. In recent years, polar bears in the Arctic have undertaken longer than usual swims to find prey, possibly resulting in four recorded drownings in the unusually large ice pack regression of 2005.


title: Polar bear

text: A new development is that polar bears have begun ranging to new territory. While not unheard of but still uncommon, polar bears have been sighted increasingly in larger numbers ashore, staying on the mainland for longer periods of time during the summer months, particularly in North Canada, traveling farther inland. This may cause an increased reliance on terrestrial diets, such as goose eggs, waterfowl and caribou, as well as increased human–bear conflict.


title: Polar bear

text: Polar bears accumulate high levels of persistent organic pollutants such as polychlorinated biphenyl (PCBs) and chlorinated pesticides. Due to their position at the top of the ecological pyramid, with a diet heavy in blubber in which halocarbons concentrate, their bodies are among the most contaminated of Arctic mammals. Halocarbons (also known as organohalogens) are known to be toxic to other animals, because they mimic hormone chemistry, and biomarkers such as immunoglobulin G and retinol suggest similar effects on polar bears. PCBs have received the most study, and they have been associated with birth defects and immune system deficiency.


title: Polar bear

text: Many chemicals, such as PCBs and DDT, have been internationally banned due to the recognition of their harm on the environment. Their concentrations in polar bear tissues continued to rise for decades after being banned, as these chemicals spread through the food chain. Since then, the trend seems to have abated, with tissue concentrations of PCBs declining between studies performed from 1989 to 1993 and studies performed from 1996 to 2002. During the same time periods, DDT was found to be notably lower in the Western Hudson Bay population only.


title: Polar bear

text: Oil and gas development in polar bear habitat can affect the bears in a variety of ways. An oil spill in the Arctic would most likely concentrate in the areas where polar bears and their prey are also concentrated, such as sea ice leads. Because polar bears rely partly on their fur for insulation and soiling of the fur by oil reduces its insulative value, oil spills put bears at risk of dying from hypothermia. Polar bears exposed to oil spill conditions have been observed to lick the oil from their fur, leading to fatal kidney failure. Maternity dens, used by pregnant females and by females with infants, can also be disturbed by nearby oil exploration and development. Disturbance of these sensitive sites may trigger the mother to abandon her den prematurely, or abandon her litter altogether.


title: Polar bear

text: Steven Amstrup and other U.S. Geological Survey scientists have predicted two-thirds of the world's polar bears may disappear by 2050, based on moderate projections for the shrinking of summer sea ice caused by climate change, though the validity of this study has been debated. The bears could disappear from Europe, Asia, and Alaska, and be depleted from the Canadian Arctic Archipelago and areas off the northern Greenland coast. By 2080, they could disappear from Greenland entirely and from the northern Canadian coast, leaving only dwindling numbers in the interior Arctic Archipelago. However, in the short term, some polar bear populations in historically colder regions of the Arctic may temporarily benefit from a milder climate, as multiyear ice that is too thick for seals to create breathing holes is replaced by thinner annual ice.


title: Polar bear

text: Polar bears diverged from brown bears 400,000–600,000 years ago and have survived past periods of climate fluctuation. It has been claimed that polar bears will be able to adapt to terrestrial food sources as the sea ice they use to hunt seals disappears. However, most polar bear biologists think that polar bears will be unable to completely offset the loss of calorie-rich seal blubber with terrestrial foods, and that they will be outcompeted by brown bears in this terrestrial niche, ultimately leading to a population decline.


title: Polar bear

text: Warnings about the future of the polar bear are often contrasted with the fact that worldwide population estimates have increased over the past 50 years and are relatively stable today. Some estimates of the global population are around 5,000 to 10,000 in the early 1970s; other estimates were 20,000 to 40,000 during the 1980s. Current estimates put the global population at between 20,000 and 25,000 or 22,000 and 31,000. Despite the encouraging rebound of some populations, there is little evidence to suggest polar bears are thriving overall.


title: Polar bear

text: There are several reasons for the apparent discordance between past and projected population trends: estimates from the 1950s and 1960s were based on stories from explorers and hunters rather than on scientific surveys. Second, controls of harvesting were introduced that allowed this previously overhunted species to recover. Third, the recent effects of climate change have affected sea ice abundance in different areas to varying degrees.


title: Polar bear

text: Debate over the listing of the polar bear under endangered species legislation has put conservation groups and Canada's Inuit at opposing positions; the Nunavut government and many northern residents have condemned the U.S. initiative to list the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act. Many Inuit believe the polar bear population is increasing, and restrictions on commercial sport-hunting are likely to lead to a loss of income to their communities.


title: Polar bear

text: For the indigenous peoples of the Arctic, polar bears have long played an important cultural and material role. Polar bear remains have been found at hunting sites dating to 2,500 to 3,000 years ago and 1,500-year-old cave paintings of polar bears have been found in the Chukchi Peninsula. Indeed, it has been suggested that Arctic peoples' skills in seal hunting and igloo construction has been in part acquired from the polar bears themselves.


title: Polar bear

text: The Inuit and Alaska Natives have many folk tales featuring the bears including legends in which bears are humans when inside their own houses and put on bear hides when going outside, and stories of how the constellation that is said to resemble a great bear surrounded by dogs came into being. These legends reveal a deep respect for the polar bear, which is portrayed as both spiritually powerful and closely akin to humans. The human-like posture of bears when standing and sitting, and the resemblance of a skinned bear carcass to the human body, have probably contributed to the belief that the spirits of humans and bears were interchangeable.


title: Polar bear

text: Among the Chukchi and Yupik of eastern Siberia, there was a longstanding shamanistic ritual of "thanksgiving" to the hunted polar bear. After killing the animal, its head and skin were removed and cleaned and brought into the home, and a feast was held in the hunting camp in its honor. To appease the spirit of the bear, traditional song and drum music was played, and the skull was ceremonially fed and offered a pipe. Only once the spirit was appeased was the skull be separated from the skin, taken beyond the bounds of the homestead, and placed in the ground, facing north.


title: Polar bear

text: The Nenets of north-central Siberia placed particular value on the talismanic power of the prominent canine teeth. These were traded in the villages of the lower Yenisei and Khatanga rivers to the forest-dwelling peoples further south, who would sew them into their hats as protection against brown bears. It was believed that the "little nephew" (the brown bear) would not dare to attack a man wearing the tooth of its powerful "big uncle", the polar bear. The skulls of killed polar bears were buried at sacred sites, and altars, called "sedyangi", were constructed out of the skulls. Several such sites have been preserved on the Yamal Peninsula.


title: Polar bear

text: Their distinctive appearance and their association with the Arctic have made polar bears popular icons, especially in those areas where they are native. The Canadian two-dollar coin carries an image of a lone polar bear on its reverse side, while a special millennium edition featured three. Vehicle licence plates in the Northwest Territories in Canada are in the shape of a polar bear, as was the case in Nunavut until 2012; these now display polar bear artwork instead. The polar bear is the mascot of Bowdoin College, Maine; the University of Alaska Fairbanks; and the 1988 Winter Olympics held in Calgary. The Eisbären Berlin hockey team uses a roaring polar bear as their logo, and the Charlotte, North Carolina hockey team the Charlotte Checkers uses a polar bear named Chubby Checker as their mascot.


title: Polar bear

text: Coca-Cola has used images of the polar bear in its advertising, and Polar Beverages, Nelvana, Bundaberg Rum, Klondike bars, and Fox's Glacier Mints all feature polar bears in their logos.