Bear Necessities
Ecology concentrates on studying an organisms
interactions with all of the living and non-living
components surrounding it.
Within a habitat (the physical area in which a species
lives), every population occupies an ecological niche. It
involves the complete analysis of what an organism does in
and to its environment as well as what the environment
does to the organism.
Many organisms change their location depending on
the season and climatic changes that affect their food
source. Migration patterns are repeated by large parts of
the population in a predictable time frame with a
predictable geographical movement. Migration is one way
in which animals can adjust to the environment. Entire
populations of some animals move to regions with a more
plentiful food supple.
Questions:
1. What do Ecologists study?
2. What is an ecological niche?
3. How did the town of Churchill, Manitoba affect the
migration of the polar bear?
4. Why do polar bears feed mostly on seals?
5. How do polar bears spend their summer months?
6. Why do the polar bears move north in the fall?
Answers:
1. Ecologists study the relationship among living and nonliving things and their environment.
2. An ecological niche is the way of life or the role of an
organism in an ecosystem.
3. The town of Churchill, Manitoba has a landfill site and is on
the direct migration route of the polar bear. The bears come
to the landfill site where the bears come in contact with
humans. Hungry bears and angry humans are a bad mix—
one or the other may get hurt.
4. Polar bears feed mostly on seals because the high energy
seal meat builds layers of fat to protect the polar bears from
the cold.
5. In summer, polar bears live in the forests. They spend most
of their summer sleeping and lazing around living on the
stored fat.
6. Polar bears move north in the fall because they have used up
the energy they stored as fat the previous winter. They are
hungry and are in search of food (seals).