A wild female polar bear was recently filmed with a cub that’s not her own: a notably rare behavior that’s been determined to be an adoption.
It was filmed during the annual polar bear migration along Canada’s Western Hudson Bay in Manitoba.
There’s a reason why “red in tooth and claw” has been used to describe the natural world ever since society began attempting to establish laws as a means to separate ourselves from it: that’s because it’s true.
There are fewer places where this maxim clearer than in the world of bears, which engage in both infanticide and cannibalism. But a softer side, reinforcing the strength of the animal’s maternal instincts, was recently filmed and confirmed by scientists.
“Throughout over 45 years of tracking more than 4,600 individual polar bears in this Western Hudson Bay subpopulation, this is the 13th known case of adoption,” said Dr. Evan Richardson, a polar bear research scientist for the group Environment and Climate Change Canada.
“The mother, known as bear X33991, was encountered by researchers in the spring of 2025 as she came out of her maternity den, and she only had one cub, which was tagged. When she was seen again in the fall, she had two cubs, one with a tag and one without. Genetic samples were taken from the adopted cub and are being analyzed to try to identify its biological mother.”
OTHER ODD ADOPTIONS:
- Tiny Goat Triplet Shunned at Birth is Now Thriving After Two Sheepdogs Adopt Her and Teach Her to Be a Collie
- Rare Wild Baby Horse Is Adopted by a Domestic Pony That Just Lost Her Own Foal
- Baby Emu Orphan is Adopted by a Chicken–An Unexpected Mother Hen Turned Teacher
There is more than one reason for polar bears to adopt other cubs, Richardson said in an email statement. In some previous adoption cases, he explained, biological mothers were known to still be alive, suggesting the cub wasn’t an orphan, but rather the subject of “switching litters.”
While the survival rate for any polar bear cub to adulthood is about 50%, having a mother provides a much better chance for the adopted cub. In the Western Hudson Bay population, 3 out of 13 adoption cases have survived to adulthood.
WATCH the footage below…
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