you’re also looking at the polar bear
and by the way the best research has
discovered that in every polar bear
that’s alive today there’s a bit of the
Irish
you wouldn’t think of polar bears being
in Ireland how does first of all how
does that happen how are they all
connected to the Irish well did you say
in the news recently in the last couple
years that there are polar bear brown
bear hybrids that people have found
hunters have found in in happening now
as the climate is changing yeah and so
that’s happening because polar bears and
brown bears are actually not that
different from each other they only
diverged from a common ancestor probably
around 500 thousand years ago or maybe
less than that so they’re still very
closely related to each other and they
can breed and produce hybrid fertile
hybrid offspring and it turns out that
they do this whenever their ranges
overlap and the last time their ranges
overlapped was actually around the last
ice age just before the last ice age
where a lot of ice was formed over the
the North Pole and it pushed polar bears
onto land the extent of their habitat
was at the edge of this ice floe which
was on land and brown bears because
there were glaciers on land were pushed
to the edge of their habitat and again
they interbred Ireland happened to be
the meeting and it happened to have
happened in Ireland indeed and so an
Irish brown bear is actually the mother
of all living polar bears and none of
the Irish bears are left today no Irish
bears brown bears have been extinct and
I wonder since about six maybe eight
thousand years ago the taking that
research what does that say for polar
bears today and and that’s survival of
that species given we’ve seen
hybridization occur in the past it
didn’t work out so well for the woolly
mammoth because the humans were there
but we we’ve been here now in the polar
bears a sort of survive does polar bears
ours are threatened so because they
require sea ice to be able to survive
and well
survive with hybrid can they hybridize
again and then go back and become polar
bears you know this it’s a good question
and it’s one that people have asked but
I think that if the only way that the
polar bear can survive is by hybridizing
with a brown bear and those hybrids then
mate with brown bears you’re gonna get
only brown bears and the polar bear will
go extinct the only way that it can
survive is if those hybrids manage to
find other populations of polar bears to
then breed with or places to live where
they can be polar bears
they’ll hybridize the genetic material
will still be there just like there’s
Neanderthal genetic material in all of
us right but they won’t be polar bears
and by the way the best research has
discovered that in every polar bear
that’s alive today there’s a bit of the
Irish
you wouldn’t think of polar bears being
in Ireland how does first of all how
does that happen how are they all
connected to the Irish well did you say
in the news recently in the last couple
years that there are polar bear brown
bear hybrids that people have found
hunters have found in in happening now
as the climate is changing yeah and so
that’s happening because polar bears and
brown bears are actually not that
different from each other they only
diverged from a common ancestor probably
around 500 thousand years ago or maybe
less than that so they’re still very
closely related to each other and they
can breed and produce hybrid fertile
hybrid offspring and it turns out that
they do this whenever their ranges
overlap and the last time their ranges
overlapped was actually around the last
ice age just before the last ice age
where a lot of ice was formed over the
the North Pole and it pushed polar bears
onto land the extent of their habitat
was at the edge of this ice floe which
was on land and brown bears because
there were glaciers on land were pushed
to the edge of their habitat and again
they interbred Ireland happened to be
the meeting and it happened to have
happened in Ireland indeed and so an
Irish brown bear is actually the mother
of all living polar bears and none of
the Irish bears are left today no Irish
bears brown bears have been extinct and
I wonder since about six maybe eight
thousand years ago the taking that
research what does that say for polar
bears today and and that’s survival of
that species given we’ve seen
hybridization occur in the past it
didn’t work out so well for the woolly
mammoth because the humans were there
but we we’ve been here now in the polar
bears a sort of survive does polar bears
ours are threatened so because they
require sea ice to be able to survive
and well
survive with hybrid can they hybridize
again and then go back and become polar
bears you know this it’s a good question
and it’s one that people have asked but
I think that if the only way that the
polar bear can survive is by hybridizing
with a brown bear and those hybrids then
mate with brown bears you’re gonna get
only brown bears and the polar bear will
go extinct the only way that it can
survive is if those hybrids manage to
find other populations of polar bears to
then breed with or places to live where
they can be polar bears
they’ll hybridize the genetic material
will still be there just like there’s
Neanderthal genetic material in all of
us right but they won’t be polar bears
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