Wild Polar Bear Adopts A Cub In Western Hudson Bay In “Extraordinarily Rare” Behavior

A wild female polar bear in Canada’s Churchill, Manitoba, had been observed and captured on camera with an adopted cub that is not her own. Adoption among polar bears isn’t unheard of, but it is extremely rare and it’s even rarer still for scientists to identify and film the adopted polar bear family. The mother is a bear known as bear X33991 and she’s a part of the Western Hudson Bay subpopulation of polar bears in this part of the world. To date, this marks only the 13th known case of adoption among the 4,600 bears that live here, which have been studied for the last 45 years. When bear X33991 came out of her maternity den in spring 2025, she had just one cub that was tagged by scientists. You can understand their confusion, then, when she was spotted again in fall 2025 with two cubs in tow – one with a tag, and one without. Read more: https://www.iflscience.com/polar-bear-mom-adopts-cub-only-the-13th-known-case-of-adoption-in-45-years-of-study-at-hudson-bay-81933 Video credit: Dave Sandford / Discover Churchill (Wildlife Photographer, Guide, and Polar Bears International Photo Ambassador)