After "Dances with Wolves" comes "Picnic with a Polar Bear": a
spectacular video made public Wednesday showing a Norwegian
adventurer sharing salmon sandwiches with the great white king of
the Arctic.
"I gave him salmon sandwiches with mayonnaise," explained Ragnar
Thorseth, as he was filmed feeding a young polar bear from the deck
of the Havella, a ship initially built for... polar bear
hunting.
Shot more than 20 years ago during a visit in the Norwegian
archipelago of Svalbard, some 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) from the
North Pole, the video was only made public Wednesday.
"One can gauge a polar bear as you can gauge people, wild
animals or other situations: is it aggressive? Is it hungry? Does
it want to hurt me?" explained Thorseth, who at the start of the
video assured the rest of his crew that the bear "is not
dangerous."
"It does not have any natural predators, so it does not feel
afraid except perhaps the fear inspired by other polar bears," he
added.
A protected species, the polar bear is seriously threatened by
the shrinking of the northern polar cap induced by global
warming.
According to the US Geological Survey, two-thirds of today's
polar bear population of 20-25,000 risks disappearing by 2050.