What Animals Live On The Polar Ice Caps

What Kind of Animals Live in Ice Caps?

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Ice caps are the coldest places on Earth; average monthly temperatures never rising above freezing. Ice caps occur in the bitterly cold Arctic and Antarctic over the interior of Greenland and continent of Antarctica. Despite their frozen, harsh climate, ice caps and their surrounding waters are abode to several hearty, adaptable animate being species.

Polar Bears

Polar bears, ursus maritimus, roam the chill water ice caps and ice sheets in search of their favorite casualty, seals. Their large, slightly webbed front paws and dumbo, thick fur brand them adept hunters on frozen land and in the frigid bounding main. As strong swimmers, they're able to cover hundreds of miles and stem thin ice where seals besiege to breathe. The 900- to ane,600-pound polar behave has bright white fur that provides camouflage in the ice and snow and no natural predators, making her the queen of the Arctic.

Seals

Seals, the mighty polar deport'southward favorite prey, inhabit ice caps and the surrounding waters. They spend time the majority of their time beneath the ice caps hunting arctic cod, crustaceans and mollusks. One species of seal, the Weddell seal (leptonychotes weddellii), prefers non to migrate, instead living near water ice caps yr-round. These 1,000-pound beauties are tedious on state but can swim at a speed of v to 7 knots, dive almost 2,000 feet deep and remain underwater for upwards to an hour earlier surfacing to breathe. When they practice need air, Weddell seals utilise their precipitous canine teeth to create breathing holes in areas of sparse ice.

Birds

Several species of birds live on water ice caps, at least during the warmer summer months. These include ptarmigans, snowy owls and ravens. Perhaps the most remarkably adaptable species, the raven (corvus corax), scavenges the ice caps in search of delicacies -- only about anything it tin can fit in its mouth. Ravens consume other birds, rodents, grains, worms, insects and fifty-fifty human garbage. Virtually the water ice caps their likely diet consists of small insects and carcasses left behind by polar bears.

Whales

Orcas and beluga whales are indigenous to ice caps effectually the Arctic Circle. Belugas (delphinapterus leucas) inhabit the shallow waters of Arctic seas surrounding the water ice caps. These milky white whales are social animals preferring to live in pods of hundreds and even thousands. They rarely alienation the water's surface, instead spending their time vocalizing, swimming and playing with plants, dead fish and even air bubbles underwater. Their diet is varied and includes smelt, flatfish, flounder, sculpins, salmon, cod, crab, shrimp, clams, worms, octopus and squid. A beluga lacks an affluence of sharp teeth so he uses suction to take hold of and trap prey and so swallows information technology whole.

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