Polar Bears and Dogs: Play, Curiosity and the Churchill Encounters

A polar bear and a dog touching noses in the snow looks like a scene from a children’s book. A short film excerpt released by FirstScience, credited to the programme Jailed Polar Bear, shows polar bears and dogs sharing a small patch of ground in exactly this way. The real story behind such encounters, best documented near Churchill in northern Canada, is part curiosity, part play and part danger.

The polar bears and dogs video

In the excerpt, the bears and dogs move around each other at close range. They approach, pause and circle, and at moments come into direct contact. The clip comes from a longer programme, so it captures only a few minutes of behaviour from these particular animals.

Churchill, Manitoba: the polar bear capital of the world

The most famous meetings between polar bears and dogs happen near Churchill, Manitoba, on the shore of Hudson Bay. Each autumn polar bears move to the coast and wait for the bay to freeze so they can hunt ringed seals. October and November are the peak months, and visitors watch the bears from tundra buggies, boats and helicopters.

Churchill has about 870 residents and no road link to the rest of Canada. Travellers arrive on the VIA Rail train from Winnipeg, a journey of about 40 hours, or on Calm Air flights. Bears that keep returning to town, mostly adolescents, are tranquillised and held in the local polar bear holding facility, known as the “polar bear jail”, until the bay freezes. Then they are released back into the wild.

Mile 5 and the viral encounters

Outside town, Brian Ladoon runs the Mile 5 Dog Sanctuary, where sled dogs are kept chained in a yard. Polar bears regularly wander through, and visitors pay to photograph them. In November 2016 a video showed a bear apparently stroking a chained dog there. Soon after, CBC reported that three bears were removed after killing and eating other dogs at the yard. In 2018 veterinary nurse Brittany Semeniuk filmed another bear nudging and pawing a dog for about 15 minutes before wandering off, leaving the dog unharmed.

Ladoon is a controversial figure in Churchill. A spokesperson for Manitoba’s conservation officers said he had been accused of feeding the bears, which he denies.

Play or predation? What experts say

Scientists offer several explanations for why a bear might play with a dog instead of attacking it:

• Curiosity: Tom Smith of Polar Bears International says bears have a high “curiosity quotient” and investigate with their teeth and paws. A dog that turns submissive may look to the bear like a play partner.
• Food: Sandra Elvin of the National Geographic Society says overfed dogs and food in the yard lure bears in, so the bears associate the dogs with easy food.
• The dogs’ view: Semeniuk pointed out that chained dogs have no choice but to interact with the bear, and called the encounters incredibly dangerous for them.

The lesson for visitors to Churchill is simple: watch polar bears from a tundra buggy or with a licensed guide, and keep dogs and food well away from bear country.

Related reading

• a polar bear investigating a filming pod
• Mark Dumas and Agee: A Polar-Bear Filming Relationship
• The BBC’s Snowball Cam Meets Svalbard Polar Bears
• Helsinki Zoo’s Brown Bears Return to the Snow
• Gerda and Her Cub: Vera Salnitskaya’s Polar Bear Photographs

Sources