A hunter in Canada spotted what he at first thought was a fox or a small polar bear.
It turned out to be much more rare.
Didji Ishalook was hunting near his home in Arviat, an Inuit village located on the western shore of Hudson Bay in Nunavut.
“It turned out to be a grizzly half-breed,” Ishalook told CBC News. “It looks like a polar bear but … it’s got brown paws and big claws like a grizzly. And the shape of a grizzly head.”
The bear resembled the body type of a grizzly, but the color of a polar bear.
Dave Garshelis, a bear expert and scientist from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, said it was a hybrid polar bear.
Unofficially, it’s called a grolar bear or a pizzly bear.
It’s not an albino bear, he said.
“An albino bear would have a light-colored or pink-colored nose, and no pigmentation in the eyes and the claws,” Garshelis told CBC News. “This bear has a black nose, and normal dark-colored eyes and claws. So, it’s not an albino.”
Hunters in northern Canada have reported three hybrid bears since 2006. “With climate change, grizzly bears are moving farther north, so there is more overlap between grizzly bears and polar bears in terms of their range,” Garshelis told CBC.
(H/T - GrindTV)
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