McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Question for Jim and others, “Yes or No, does the bear ever go away?”
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: Zygoptera on September 18, 2007, 09:30:34 PM ---Polar bears are not real bears? They're genetically very closely related to brown bears. What research are you looking at, just curiously?
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Last I saw - and do please remind me to look this up if I don't come back to it - polar bears are genetically closer to weasels, ferrets and so forth than to other bears. Convergent evolution to some extent.
blgarver:
--- Quote from: neurovore on September 19, 2007, 03:17:05 PM ---Last I saw - and do please remind me to look this up if I don't come back to it - polar bears are genetically closer to weasels, ferrets and so forth than to other bears. Convergent evolution to some extent.
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They do sort of look weasel-esque in the face I guess.
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: blgarver on September 19, 2007, 05:43:23 PM ---They do sort of look weasel-esque in the face I guess.
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There are a fairly tightly defined set of solutions to the problem of how best to move fast in water, which is why fish, whales and ichthyosaurs are all roughly the same shape despite coming from differently-shaped direct ancestors. I've been in a couple of zoo-type things with polar bear enclosures where one could see them on land and in water, and that face from above is strikingly streamlined.
Stuart1512:
Bear?
Zygoptera:
--- Quote from: neurovore on September 19, 2007, 03:17:05 PM ---Last I saw - and do please remind me to look this up if I don't come back to it - polar bears are genetically closer to weasels, ferrets and so forth than to other bears. Convergent evolution to some extent.
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From what I've quickly read up on Google Scholar, all evidence points to polar bears being actual bears.
Phylogenetic Relationships of North American Ursids Based on Analysis of Mitochondrial DNA
Mitochondrial DNA Sequence Evolution in the Arctoidea (full text avail)
An Empirical Evaluation of Genetic Distance.....From Bear (Ursidae) Populations (full text avail)
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