Rare Family of Hybrid ‘Grolar’ Bears Found in Canadian Arctic

Canada is home to the world’s only known group of “grolars,” a family of eight polar and grizzly bear hybrids that lived in the far North, according to a newly published study. A team of North American researchers studied 819 wild grizzly and polar bears across Canada, Alaska, and Greenland, to determine if the two species of bears were regularly intermingling. The findings, published last week in the journal Conservation Genetics Resources, have allayed fears by some scientists that climate change could be leading to regular interbreeding between the two species, at least for the present. “I had anticipated finding more hybrids other than the eight that we already knew about,” study author Ruth Rivkin told The Epoch Times....