I have heard that polar bears are spending more time ashore these days, and crossing with brown bears up north. I'm wondering if such a cross can reproduce or is a hybrid?

KB

I've seen picture of them. Some guy shot one 2 or 3 years ago. I'm not sure if the offspring are furtile or not, but yes it happens.

Brett

My guess is that the cross would be viable but know of no data proving - or disproving - it.

Considering they have the same ancestor, it would be very hard for the two not to produce fertile crosses. As all polar bears originated in Siberia in a ice age locked group of brown bears.

It would very doubtful that the two have not crossed before the most recent and famous one was shot. Not a lot of people live in the areas where their ranges overlap. And since they are mostly Sammi and Eskimo it is doubtful they spend a lot of time talking about it with the rest of us.

This story just ran on, of all things, National Geographic Explorer. The hunter killed a hybrid in 2006 on the SW coast of Banks Island. He had one hell of time (1) not getting fined for killing a grizzly, and (2) getting to keep his trophy. DNA out of the biology lab in Br.Col.determined it was a cross from a male grizzly and a female polar bear. Jim finally got off the hook and got to keep his bear too. It looks like a slightly cream colored polar bear with two black eyes. Claws were short and black like a polar bear. It was only about 7 feet long. Reported as one shot off hand at 300 yards. Not bad shootin there Quigley.

NatGeo did a pretty good job of not persecuting the hunting fraternity on this one and concluded their hour long story with the conjecture that there are surely others out there on the ice. Speculation was that the grizzly crossed over to Victoria Island on the freeze up and wandered around looking fer whit womem! Wonder if the grizzly is still out there too?

I saw a fox this morning that looked like a cross between an artic and a red fox ..

It's pretty well been an accepted fact that there has been a few grizzly sightings on the islands over the last 10 years and that they've adapted to hunting seals, etc. like their cousins. So a breeding was inevitable. ....Yes, there's most likely a few more moving around.

April 2006, I hunted Polar Bear in the Northwest Territories, I was lucky to get a nice bear, as we moved off of the sea ice to hunt Musk ox we saw a Grizzly/Polar bear cross it was easy to see that this was a cross bear, after speaking with more of the locals they have seen a increase in these cross gender bears, which means there must be some breeding going on!

The village I hunted in classified this type of bear as a grizzly and not a polar this may end up becoming a loop hole in the system as far as importing goes! This may be as close as a hunter from the U.S. is concerned to get a polar bear although not a full 100% pure into the states.

Just a thought!

saw a tv show where some guy shot what looked like a polar(white fur) upon further exam the carcass was more like brown bear, anyway the canadians were prosecuting him. his permit wasnt for brown bear