You're listening to Bold Proof Radio with Dave Asprey.

Today's cool fact of the day is that polar bears have fast metabolism.

A new study just came out where they found that polar bears in Alaska have a metabolic

rate 1.6 times greater than they thought.

With bodies that burn energy that fast, polar bears need to eat a blueberry adult-ringed

seal or 19 baby seals.

Every 10-12 days just to maintain their weight.

This is kind of cool because they put video cameras on their polar bears and figured out

their metabolic rates, just going about their lives and spring, and found that female

polar bears need to eat a little bit more than 12,000 calories a day, just to stay even.

They found that female polar bears walking around on the ice have extreme weight swings,

some losing 10% of their body mass in just over a week.

This is the first study that puts firm numbers on the basic needs of these polar bears who

are interesting because polar bears are the most fat-burning ketogenic animals on the planet.

When we look at what happens in those extreme conditions, we can learn more about what happens

in our own bodies when we're going into fat-burning mode.

These animals have lives tied to the annual shrinkage of Arctic sea ice, and since they

live on fat, we're learning a few things, but we're also finding out that since they have

to swim more and they have to go further distances to hunt now with a metabolic rate that

high, there are disadvantages.

For instance, sometimes they can't eat enough and we're losing some polar bears because

of that.

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