Ursus maritimus have large, slightly hooked canine teeth almost two inches in length that can tear through thick blubber and meat without a problem. Polar bears are the biggest bear species-males can be 10 feet in length and up to 1,700 pounds. They can smell prey from more than 20 miles away and can even smell an animal from under three feet of dense snow.
Their migration swims average more than a hundred miles and are helped by the fact that their massive dinner-plate-sized paws are slightly webbed. Aside from a few massive walruses able to pierce an unlucky polar bear’s body with their powerful tusks, no one outside of humans stands a chance at hurting these animals. Polar Bearsįor thousands of years, polar bears have reigned as the top predator in the Arctic marine regions. If that’s something you have on your travel bucket list, here are five travel experiences that can’t be missed: 1. Seeing an apex predator maneuver unbothered in the wild is a sight to behold. Since their reintroduction in the 1990s, gray wolves have brought some balance back to the ecosystem. It was definitely one of those “whoopsie” scenarios in science. When humans interfered with the gray wolf population in the park, the elk population exploded and grazed across the land, killing off of young brush and trees and forcing beavers to move out of the area. One of the clearest examples of a trophic cascade is the gray wolf’s eradication and then reintroduction in Yellowstone National Park. According to the trophic cascade theory, apex predation is crucial in limiting an ecosystem’s population size for various species. This phenomenon decreases biodiversity, because the sudden spike in mesopredator populations can force changes way too fast in an ecosystem’s structures. For instance, when settlers killed off wolves, pumas and mountain lions, coyotes stepped into their roles as the new dominant hunter on those lands.ĭecreasing apex predator populations has a major effect on the ecosystems where they live, because when the top predators disappear from an ecosystem, medium-sized predators’ populations (mesopredators) quickly boom. Other times, if humans kill off the ecosystem’s natural apex predators, other animals rise up to become the dominant predators. In some instances, humans have introduced apex predators-a clear example being dingoes in Australia, which scientists think were brought to the country between 3,000 to 4,000 years ago. These dominant predators often have massive home ranges but small population densities, which unfortunately means human interference and habitat encroachment can cause serious threats to their survival. But it’s not all take and no give these animals fulfill very important ecological roles, as they regulate prey populations and change prey behavior in ways that greatly benefit many other species. Think of the kind of creature that can strut, swim or fly confidently through its habitat, unconcerned, never having to look over its shoulder-a lion, a snow leopard, an orca, a polar bear or golden eagle, for example. An apex predator is the hardcore animal at the top of its food chain, the baddest of the bad, with no natural predators in its ecosystem.
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