Ecologists often venture into remote wilderness areas to observe and study wild creatures in their natural habitats. Among all the animals, tracking polar bears in the Arctic is challenging due to extreme temperatures, hard-to-reach locations, and a changing landscape. Now, in a groundbreaking advancement, scientists are employing innovative techniques to shed light on the understudied life stage of these animals. Speaking of which, rare and captivating footage has recently surfaced online, capturing the momentous moment of polar bear cubs emerging from their maternal dens for the very first time.

The footage gives a sneak peek of a mother polar bear venturing out of her den in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard with her three cubs following her, slipping and sliding around in the frozen terrain. To capture this glimpse, researchers from Polar Bears International, the Norwegian Polar Institute, San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, and the University of Toronto Scarborough deployed GPS collars with remote cameras at the den sites in Svalbard, Norway, for nearly a decade.

Over six years, Archer and her colleagues tracked 13 denning females in the Svalbard archipelago who had been fitted with monitoring collars and used the collar data to locate their dens. For almost a month, the cameras collected thousands of time-lapse photographs to track female and cub behaviour around the den. The camera footage captured the bears emerging from the den, their behaviour around the den, and when they left the site.

This study was published in the Journal of Wildlife Management on February 27. According to the study, polar bear babies rely heavily on their mothers and rarely leave the den alone. In the clip, they were observed without their mothers only 5 per cent of the time. In Svalbard, cubs are dependent on their mother for up to 2.5 years.

Lead author Louise Archer, an ecologist with the University of Toronto Scarborough, told LiveScience, “In Svalbard, polar bears build their dens on the slopes of steep mountainous areas, and it’s hard to imagine how cubs could find their feet in this severe terrain."

“Watching them sliding, tumbling, and even climbing up on their mother was truly remarkable. The snow-covered den is almost like an extension of the womb—it provides a warm and stable environment, allowing cubs to continue to grow and develop," Archer added.

The findings also suggest that polar bear families might have departed from their Svalbard dens about a week earlier in the spring than they have in years past. While climate change might be the possible cause of the behaviour change, researchers speculate that Svalbard is warming faster than most other places in the world.