EXCLUSIVE: Male Polar Bear Chases and Eats Cub | National Geographic

[Music] [Applause] Blood on Ice in the Arctic is not a sign of death; it's an affirmation of life. For me, it was life in the Arctic. It was the [Music] [Applause] hunt.

So the polar bears are currently here on the sea ice, looking for seals, their favorite [Music] food. Now here you see the female and the cub running as fast as they possibly can. Now, you rarely see that. The only thing that would make a female run like that is being threatened by an adult male. Normally, the males don't chase them. Particularly, the females are very fast, but when they've got a little cub with them like that, they run more slowly, and so it's possible for a male to catch up. Unfortunately, the male was just gaining on them the whole time. The cub was falling back and, um, at one stage, the mother turned and tried to defend, but the male basically just ran straight past her.

In the end, the cub dived into a little pool, and the male was in straight after. The female actually jumped in there as well, but it was all too late. The male had the [Music] cub. The loss of a cub is very traumatic for her, but the important thing is for her to save her own life. She quickly changes from being a bit defensive of her cub and trying to protect it to realizing there's no longer any hope, and that the best thing for her to do is leave and get as far away as possible as soon as [Music] possible.

To witness something that obviously is just normal in the life of a polar bear, but for all of us being seen the first time just off the ship, I think it was very, very emotional. Certainly, it was really hard to look away. I watched the entire scene through my binoculars, but it was painful to see that. I mean, sure, you understand that this is life in the Arctic, and this is something we know about polar bear biology, but to see it is really dramatic.

In the late summer, like that, you don't see very many seals up on the ice in these open areas. So the amount of available food for a polar bear is quite reduced. One of the only things that's left to eat is, in fact, cubs of various ages. The footage itself is quite rare, but the event probably isn't. It's likely something that will occur more often as more and more ice melts through climate change and food becomes less readily available to polar bears on the ice. [Music]