(MWN / 07-12-09)  Some pictures of Reuters taken in the Artic in Canada show a polar bear that, after having eaten a cub, still has in between its jaws the rests of its head and some guts.

Experts believe that climate change is modifying the behaviour of these animals when reducing their hunting grounds, to the extent that some of them have begun to show cannibalistic behaviours that were previously extremely rare, as stated by newspaper ABC in the article “Bears Polar become cannibals”.

Scientists have already warned of cases like this one in a study released come months ago: “Our work goes back more than two decades and we had never seen things like the ones happened in recent years: we have three examples in Alaska and Canada of bears that attacked and had cannibal behaviours with other members of their group. And also the case of a mother that killed her cub”.

The new pictures, taken in an area of 186 miles in the North of the Canadian village Churchill, where the population of bears is declining, seems to show that they are right. Researchers explain that bears have each time less possibilities to get food like seals, for example, and are obliged to attack among themselves.