Polar Bear Blog - Scat Cats - August 3, 2006

Actually, it is a scat dog. Quinoa, a Dutch sheperd, is a polar bear poop sniffing dog that has just returned from Wapusk National Park along with a few other weary and mildly smelly researchers.

The crew from LaPerouse Bay is back in Churchill for another week or so, coming off another season at Nester Two - a research camp built on the edge of Wapusk National Park. Led by Robert (Rocky) Rockwell, their main focus is on snow geese and vegetation and snow geese degradation of vegetation and other things that rhyme but this year another project has been added.

The reason Quinoa is a sh*t sniffing dog is because researchers Linda Gormezano and Rocky Rockwell are collecting polar bear scat and hair samples in an effort to study the western Hudson Bay polar bear population through DNA analysis. Samples will be taken back to the American Museum of Natural History and a genetic map of our bears will be made, including where they go in the summer, who they hang out with and what they are eating, etc.

This is a big study that is going to both pave the way for non-intrusive research methods, hopefully replacing the current helicopter mark and recapture studies, and will change the way we think about polar bears in general. For instance, I bet the myth that polar bears 'fast' in the summer and that they are solitary beings, spending much of their time wandering along, will be substantially altered.

There is going to be big news from Churchill's polar bears over these next couple years and not just the usual climate change doom and gloom. The rest of the world is finally going to find out what some of us already know; that polar bears are actually a social being with complex social structure, or as a non-science-type like me would call it, culture.

More about polar bears, research and snow geese tomorrow, provided Quinoa doesn't tear my throat out... he is the ultimate protein after all.

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