This is Scientific American 60 Second Science. I'm Emily Schwang.

Polar Bears spend most of their time roaming the sea ice in search of seals.

And seals spend most of their time underneath that ice,

avoiding the top predator.

But climate change is giving polar bears

additional challenges in their searches for food.

See ice is now drifting faster. George Derners a research zoologist. food. compared sea ice ice ice conditions from 1987 to 1998 with those from 1999 to 2013.

And what we found was that ice drift at the locations used by polar bears increased 30% in the Beaufort

sea and 37% in the Chuck G. See.

That's a problem because polar bears are homebodies.

They prefer to stay in a specific range.

Throughout the range, they seem to have a sense of place.

Now, here we have a situation where the general pattern of ice drift is westward.

So to remain in your traditional range, it means you have to constantly be walking eastward

to compensate for that westward drift.

The result, a large-scale polar bear treadmill. And all that

walking requires extra fuel. On average, a single bear eats between 31 and

33 seals per year, but the metabolic consequence of the treadmill effect

means they have to eat on average one to three more. The studies in the journal

Global Change Biology and not only is the ice drifting faster, it's

also melting more, giving the bears less of the platform they use to pursue their

prey, so they need more seals but have a tougher time tracking them, all of

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