Assignment: Endangered Animal

5 min readFeb 21, 2021

(V)Ursus Maritimus — The Polar Bear

Unfortunately, the polar bear species continues to be one of the most affected species due to climate change. Rising sea levels due to warmer temperatures have melted ice caps and glaciers, making hunting for prey even more difficult. Scientists believe the rise of sea level will cause more polar bears to starve to death and possibly face mass extinction by 2100 if we don’t reverse course. Some scientists believe the damage has already been done, and these actions are irreversible, with some of the oldest glaciers known to date already melted, making it harder to reverse even with new policies.

On average, polar bears burn 12,325 calories a day, and the only way for these carnivores to supplement this high intake diet by preying on seals. It’s made it easier for seals with glaciers melting to get air and less likely to encounter polar bears while doing so. On the other hand, Polar bears swim or wander on what’s left of ice caps for hours looking for seals, which results in burning large amounts of calories with no food to replenish the used energy.

We are responsible for the cause of the ice caps melting due to our high intake of burning carbon dioxide, methane, and other various greenhouse gases. These gases leave Earth’s atmosphere and later on re-mitted, which results in heating the Earth’s core and causing the temperatures rise.

Graphs from https://phys.org/news/2020-07-snapshot-arctic-sea-ice-summer.html

“If the decline of sea ice continues to accelerate at a rate of 13% per decade in September, the Arctic is likely to be free of ice within the next three decades,” Kumar says. https://phys.org/news/2020-07-snapshot-arctic-sea-ice-summer.html

Objects Collected for Project over the course 3 Days

Styrofoam Balls of various sizes
Receipts and junk mail
Plastic containers from ordering takeout
Sharpie
Old book of matches
Dole’s fruit cup

Prototype

The biggest challenge I came across was making sure the polar would float in a tub of half of meter of water. I glued the dole fruit cup to the inside of the plastic takeout container and centered the cup in the container’s center reinforcing the support. Next, I cut in half a large and medium Styrofoam ball to use as the body and head and glued the two to the container’s bottom. Afterward, I broke matches in half and attached small Styrofoam balls as the eyes and tails to our polar bear’s body and head.

Finally, the cosmetics and small details of building out the polar bear’s eyes, nose, and mouth were left. I folded old receipts and junk mail repeatedly until I was happy with the shape, which then I glued the paper on the face and ears.

The End Result

Once the main parts of the polar were put together, I glued the bottom of the body and head to the bottom of the take-out container. I let the glue sit for 15 minutes to make sure it was dry enough before submerging the polar bear into the tub.

I added scrap Styrofoam to the tub to show other small glaciers melting and add to the environment.

Conclusion

Overall, it was fun but at times this project was a bit depressing. It was fun to do something crafty, and I haven’t done something like this since I was a kid. It was sad researching and reading different articles about how we are contributing to ruining a species. Hopefully, in the future, people will become more aware of the harm we are causing to animals and the severe actions we have on the environment. As society we should continue to commit to renewable energy and using less plastic for a more sustainable future.