The Great White Bear by Kieran Mulvaney Read Free Book Online

in order to increase her own chances of survival and thus of ultimately successful reproduction, seems to human eyes touching and warm when mother and cubs emerge from the den. She keeps them as close to her as she can: nudging them with her muzzle as they stand by her paws like uncertain children holding their mother's hands, or eager puppies keeping obediently to heel. It is a wonder that the mother does not trip over her offspring on a frequent basis, so tightly do they stick by her, winding around her paws, rubbing their heads against her legs. In time, they will grow up to be among the largest and most fearsome predators on Earth; now, they are vulnerable, largely defenseless, and insecure. Like any youngster taking its first steps in a frightening world, they want and need to stay close to their mother.
    They will stick together, on average, for two years after emerging from the den, during which time their life will be, for all intents and purposes, a picture of familial bliss. The youngsters will tumble and play, staging mock battles, rolling over each other in the snow as their mother watches over them warily. They will curl up with her in pits in the snow, to sleep and suckle. And they will follow her closely, watching and tracking her every move, and for all that period of time, she will suckle them, even as she teaches them to hunt the seals that will constitute their diet for their entire adult lives.
    During their first summer, the cubs will do almost no hunting of their own. They will, however, watch their mother closely and follow behind, sniffing where she sniffs, looking where she looks, lying down and waiting patiently when she begins to stalk or wait for prey. Occasionally, the waiting will prove too much, and the cubs, bored, will either pad up to their parent to see what is happening or will turn their attention to each other, biting, cuffing, rolling around, and running back and forth on the snow and ice—behaviors that sometimes earn a sharp rebuke from a mother anxious that her opportunity for a meal will be extinguished by such loud tomfoolery.
    By the time the cubs are a year old, they have begun to hunt for themselves more often, but both the time spent doing so and the success rate of their efforts are substantially less than their mother's. With the passage of one more year, they have become significantly more adept: whereas yearlings and two-year-olds spend between 4 and 7 percent of their time hunting (as opposed to between 35 and 50 percent for their mothers), the former generally succeed in catching, on average, one seal every twenty-two days, while the latter have improved their success rate to one seal every five to six days.
    Clearly, in that extra year the cubs have learned a great deal more from watching their mother, observations that have enabled them to become significantly more successful in their hunting. Their improvement is aided also by their growth, which gives them the extra strength needed to be able to kill and overpower a seal, and which is still fueled primarily by the nutrients from their mother's milk. That milk gives them strength, but its constant availability lessens the incentive for the cubs to refine their hunting skills with the rapidity that might be desired.
    And so, once the cubs have reached roughly two and a half years old, once they have made it through their second winter in the open and grown big enough that they have enough fat reserves to survive the immediate future, they are forced to strike out by themselves.
    Three years after she last mated, the cubs' mother is once more entering estrus. For the first time since conceiving, she is sexually receptive. The scent she exudes advertising her status attracts mature males from miles away, who now begin descending on the family's location. For the cubs it is a new and uncomfortable experience. For as long as they have been alive, their mother has protected them, kept them a safe distance from any