Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

First Ever Wild Grizzly/Polar Hybrid Shot

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the no-one-tell-stephen-colbert dept.

tavilach writes "Jim Martell has a license to hunt polar bears, but when his latest kill had "white fur [that] was spotted brown and it had the long claws and slightly humped back of a grizzly," officials seized the body in order to conduct DNA tests. These tests confirm that the dead bear had a polar bear mother and grizzly father, the first documented grizzly-polar hybrid in the wild. This was lucky for Jim, who was facing a fine and jail time for possibly killing a grizzly. Scientists who would have liked to study the bear are not so lucky."

1 of 227 comments (clear)

  1. Pathetic that this animal was shot... by Entropius · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So it's apparently legal to shoot polar bears in Canada, despite the fact that they're considered one of the animals facing increasing threats in the future from withdrawing sea ice?

    And it's also legal to shoot a half-grizzly, even though shooting grizzlies is illegal?

    What a waste of a magnificent (and apparently rare) animal. I'm probably one of the more pro-hunting folk around here; I grew up eating deer and gamebirds shot by my father, and have a bunch of respect for people who know how to turn a shotgun shell or rifle bullet into dinner. But these wealthy big-game trophy hunters, who look for rare and wondrous animals only to shoot them and turn them into rugs or wall ornaments, make me sick.

    Imagine if some guy wandering around the Antarctic finds a meteorite with evidence of Martian life in it, and whacks it with a sledgehammer...