News Animals

Polar bears sometimes bludgeon walruses to death with stones or ice

It’s long been said that a piece of ice is the perfect murder weapon

illustration of a polar bear standing on a cliff as a rock falls toward a walrus standing on a rock below

In this illustration, which appears in an 1865 book by adventurer Charles Francis Hall, a polar bear uses a rock as a tool to kill a walrus. Some have thought that Inuit reports of this behavior were just stories, but new research suggests not.

Charles Francis Hall, Library of Congress

By Gloria Dickie

- More than 2 years ago

Walruses, weighing as much as 1,300 kilograms with huge tusks and nearly impenetrable skulls, are almost impossible for a hungry polar bear to kill.