Who can be seen on a huge ice floe? This is the question sooner or later asked by curious kids. And we, adults, and ourselves think about the answer. And really, whom? First of all, who can live there? Or maybe someone chooses a floating block as a means of transportation? Let's try to talk about this in more detail.
What is an ice floe?
From the course of school geography or even natural science, we remember that an ice floe should be understood as a piece of ice that drifts on the surface of the water.
It is formed for various reasons, for example, when, due to warming, the ice cover is destroyed.
In general, ice floes come in various sizes. The largest are called icebergs. For example, it was because of such a whopper that the Titanic, tragically known throughout the world, crashed.
Very often, an ice floe becomes a means of transportation of living things. But who can be seen on a huge ice floe? Who are her passengers? If you think about it, then, even without a fair amount of knowledge, you can name several representatives at once. For example, a penguin, bear, walrus, seal, and fisherman, of course.
Great conqueror of the cold seas polar bear
Try to close your eyes and imagine a cold water surface, and now think about the local inhabitants. Who can you mentally draw on a huge ice floe? That's right, a polar bear!
These powerful representatives of the fauna live mainly along the coast and on sea ice. How do they manage not to freeze? The fact is that their fur is water-repellent and greasy, which allows them to feel comfortable swimming in the cold waters of the Antarctic and come out literally dry from the water.
But that is not all. The polar bear’s wool is also unusually thermally saving, that is, even at sub-zero temperatures on a huge ice floe, the bear is able to feel comfortable. In addition, bears also move very slowly. Thus, they try to spend the least amount of energy, and rest very often and in large quantities.
It should be noted that polar bears are carnivorous, and feed mainly on fish and fur seals, which are abundant in the northern latitudes.
According to experts, arranging a home in the snow, polar bears make multi-room dens, which even have a hood.
Interestingly, this species of bears, unlike the more common brown ones, does not fall into hibernation, only pregnant females are the exception.
Since fur plays a very important role in the life of an animal, polar bears carefully monitor their purity. Every day they spend about twenty minutes to remove dirt and food debris from their fur coats, because cleanliness affects the quality of their fur.
Funny and restless mischievous
We continue to answer the question of who can be seen on a huge ice floe. Of course, a penguin. These funny flightless sea birds often become the protagonists of not only books, but also children's cartoons. Perhaps that is why crowds of onlookers always want to get to know each other near their homes in zoos.
Although we note that they are found not only in cold places. There is a species of these birds that live almost at the equator, in the Galapagos Islands, where the temperature is above 22 degrees Celsius.
The speed of the penguin is not very high, only 1-2 kilometers per hour, but the birds are extraordinary endurance. They can cover about 100 km.
Interestingly, when penguins begin to molt, they lose more than half of their feathers. Because of this, they can not swim and do not eat until they have a new plumage.
Despite everything, penguins are considered birds, although they do not know how to fly at all. They walk and swim. In water, penguins spend half their life, and when hunting, they can survive up to half an hour.
It’s hard to imagine that penguins can dive for fish to a depth of 100 and even 500 meters! But since diving so deep is not easy, penguins have to swallow small stones.
Few people realize that every year there are fewer penguins, out of 14 species already 13 are under serious threat of extinction. In general, penguins are considered one of the oldest inhabitants of the planet.
In principle, we answered the question of who can be seen on a huge ice floe in the first place. Finally, we note that if in some animated film you see a white bear and a penguin playing together, you should know that the director simply did not bother to study these animals. This simply cannot be: polar bears and penguins live in different latitudes and never meet in the wild.