Do Polar Bears Live in Antarctica? Polar Bears vs Penguins

Where polar bears actually live

The polar bear lives only in the Arctic, in five countries: Canada, the United States (Alaska), Greenland, Norway (Svalbard) and Russia. Its true home is the frozen sea. Polar bears spend most of the year on sea ice over shallow continental shelves, hunting ringed and bearded seals at breathing holes and cracks in the ice.

The southernmost polar bears live around James Bay and Hudson Bay in Canada, below 55° north, where the bay freezes every winter. The northernmost have been seen within about 25 km (16 mi) of the North Pole. Even at their southern limit, polar bears are still thousands of kilometers from the nearest wild penguins.

Where penguins live

Penguins are a Southern Hemisphere family of about 18 species. Only a few, mainly the emperor penguin and the Adélie penguin, breed on the coasts of the Antarctic continent itself. Many others live on sub-Antarctic islands or along the cooler coasts of South America, southern Africa, Australia and New Zealand.

The only penguin that reaches north of the equator is the Galápagos penguin. A few of its colonies on the northern tip of Isabela Island sit just above the line, but it is still a tropical bird, far from the Arctic. So no wild penguin lives anywhere near a polar bear. For a full picture, see where do penguins live?

Why polar bears never reached Antarctica

Polar bears evolved from brown bears in the Arctic within the last few hundred thousand years, and they are specialists of northern sea ice. To reach Antarctica, they would have had to cross the tropics, either over land through hot regions or across thousands of kilometers of warm ocean, with no seals or ice to sustain them along the way.

The two polar regions are also very different. The Arctic is an ocean surrounded by continents, so bears can walk on sea ice that forms over shallow, food-rich water and come ashore on nearby coasts. Antarctica is the opposite: a high continent covered in thick ice and surrounded by the open Southern Ocean. Its interior is almost lifeless, and nearly all of its wildlife lives along the coast and in the sea.

Do polar bears eat penguins?

Not in the wild, because the two never share a habitat. If they did meet, a polar bear would probably treat penguins as easy prey: penguins nest on the ground, cannot fly away, and have never had to deal with large land predators.

In the Arctic, polar bears do eat seabirds and their eggs, especially in summer when they are stranded on land. They raid colonies of common eiders, thick-billed murres and gulls, and in some areas this has become a noticeable pressure on the birds. Interestingly, the northern seabird most like a penguin, the flightless great auk of the North Atlantic, was originally the bird called “penguin”. It was hunted to extinction by people in the 1840s. More on the bear’s real diet is in what do polar bears eat?

What fills the polar bear’s role in Antarctica?

Antarctica has no native land mammals, so there is no bear-like predator walking on its ice. Instead, the role of top predator is filled by animals that hunt from the sea:

The leopard seal is the closest thing to a polar bear in Antarctica. It is a large, powerful seal that waits near penguin colonies and catches birds as they enter or leave the water, and it also eats krill, fish and other seals. Killer whales hunt seals and penguins in both polar regions. Explore more in Antarctic animals.

Arctic and Antarctic animals compared

Life at the two poles evolved separately, so each region has its own set of animals. The Arctic has land mammals such as the arctic fox, reindeer, musk ox and lemmings, which can reach it over land from North America, Europe and Asia. Antarctica, isolated by ocean for millions of years, has mainly seabirds, seals, whales and invertebrates, with its largest purely land animal being a tiny wingless midge.

A simple way to remember it: polar bears and walruses live in the north, and penguins and Antarctic seals in the south. If you see polar bears and penguins in the same picture, it is either a zoo, an artwork or a mistake.