What do polar bears eat?

Polar bears eat mostly seals: ringed seals first, then bearded seals. When hunting is good, a bear may eat only the fatty blubber and skin, and it can eat more than 45 kg (100 lb) of blubber in one sitting, says Polar Bears International. Walruses, whale carcasses, birds, eggs, fish and plants are small extras.

What do polar bears eat most?

The ringed seal is the main meal. It is the most common seal in the Arctic, and one ringed seal gives a bear enough energy for about 11 days, according to San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance. The US Fish and Wildlife Service says polar bears prey heavily on ringed seals and, to a lesser extent, on bearded seals.

Bears also take walruses and beluga whales now and then. In some areas, the leftovers of bowhead whales are an important seasonal meal. These come from Indigenous subsistence hunts or from whales that wash ashore (USFWS).

Polar bear diet, from most to least important

Food	How important	When and where	What the numbers say
Ringed seal	Main prey	On the sea ice all year; easiest in spring	One seal fuels a bear for about 11 days (San Diego Zoo)
Bearded seal	Second choice	On the sea ice	Hunted less than ringed seals (USFWS)
Walrus and beluga whale	Occasional	Where bears meet them	Taken now and then (USFWS)
Whale carcasses	Important in some places	Coasts where bowhead whales are hunted or wash up	Seasonally important in parts of the range (USFWS)
Grass and seaweed	Eaten often, little energy	On land in summer	Grass in 61.7% and seaweed in 46.1% of droppings
Caribou	Minor	On land in summer	In 10.1% of droppings
Berries	Minor	On land in summer	In 8.7% of droppings
Bird eggs	Minor	Bird nesting areas in summer	In 4.4% of droppings
Fish	Rare	Coasts and rivers	Found only at low levels in droppings

The droppings figures come from 642 samples collected in western Hudson Bay, Canada, from 2006 to 2008 by Gormezano and Rockwell (2013). They show how often a food was eaten on land, not how much energy it gave. A blade of grass turns up often but does very little for a 400 kg bear.

Why do polar bears need so much fat?

Blubber is packed with energy, and polar bears burn a lot of it. In a study published in 2018, scientists fitted nine female bears in the Beaufort Sea off Alaska with video collars. They measured how much energy each bear used over 8 to 11 days in spring.

The bears used more than 50% more energy than earlier studies had predicted, reports UC Santa Cruz, where lead author Anthony Pagano was based. Five of the nine bears lost weight during the study, because they were not catching enough seals. In spring, when young seals are easy to catch, a bear may get 5 to 10 seals a month. By autumn it might catch only a couple.

That is why a well-fed bear often eats the blubber and skin and walks away from the red meat (Polar Bears International). Fat gives the most energy per bite. The leftovers then become food for scavengers.

How do polar bears catch seals?

Most hunting happens on sea ice. A bear waits beside a seal’s breathing hole, sometimes for hours, and grabs the seal when it comes up for air. It also creeps up on seals resting on the ice and makes a last quick rush.

Polar bears are strong swimmers, as our page on how fast a polar bear can swim shows. But a seal in open water can easily escape, so the ice works as the bear’s hunting floor. Its wide paws, sharp teeth and keen nose all help; our guide to polar bear adaptations explains how.

Are polar bears carnivores?

Yes. The USFWS describes polar bears as carnivorous apex predators, which means they eat meat and sit at the top of their food chain. They do nibble plants in summer, but plants can’t keep them alive. Seals can.

That makes them very different from their cousins. Grizzly bears fill up on roots, berries, insects and salmon, as our page on what grizzly bears eat explains. Giant pandas live almost entirely on bamboo. Polar bears split from brown bears and moved onto the sea ice, where the best food is fat seals.

Do polar bears eat fish?

Yes, but rarely, and fish can’t replace seals. In the Hudson Bay study, fish turned up at only low levels in bear droppings (Gormezano and Rockwell). Catching fast fish in cold water is hard work for a big bear, and most fish carry far less fat than a seal.

Fish matter more in zoos. San Diego Zoo feeds its polar bears meat and fish, plus the odd vegetable, and gives them bones to keep their teeth clean. So if you have seen a polar bear eating a fish, it may well have been in a zoo.

What do polar bears eat in summer?

When the sea ice melts, many bears must wait on land until it freezes again. On land they eat grass, seaweed, berries, bird eggs and sometimes caribou, as the table above shows. These foods do not fill the gap.

In a 2024 study, 20 polar bears in western Hudson Bay wore video collars for three summer weeks. Some rested to save energy. Others searched for berries, birds, kelp and carcasses. On average they lost about 1 kg (2.2 lb) a day, reports Polar Bears International. Land foods made up for some of the energy the active bears burned, but they did not stop the weight loss.

The same report warns that some adult bears may starve if they spend more than 180 days on land. This is why shrinking sea ice is the main threat to the species. Polar bears are listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List (2015 assessment), and the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group names sea ice loss as the most serious threat. Read more in why polar bears are endangered.

What do polar bear cubs eat?

For their first months, cubs drink only milk. A cub weighs about 0.5 kg (just over 1 lb) at birth, and its mother’s milk is 36% fat, the richest milk of any bear, according to San Diego Zoo. While she nurses in the den, the mother can go up to eight months without eating.

Once the family leaves the den, the cubs start sharing their mother’s seals. They watch her hunt and stay with her until they are about 2 years old. Our polar bear life cycle page follows each stage, and do polar bears hibernate? explains the denning months.

What don’t polar bears eat?

Penguins are off the menu, because penguins live in the Southern Hemisphere and polar bears live in the Arctic. Our page on whether polar bears eat penguins explains the map. Arctic foxes are an odd case: they often follow bears to eat scraps, and bears catch one only now and then. See do polar bears eat Arctic foxes?

People are not polar bear food either, but a hungry bear can still be dangerous. Parks Canada advises staying in a group, backing away slowly while facing the bear, never running and never feeding bears. Adult polar bears have few enemies of their own; see what eats polar bears.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

1. Polar Bears International. What do polar bears eat?.
2. US Fish and Wildlife Service. Polar bear (Ursus maritimus).
3. San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance. Polar bear.
4. Ecology and Evolution via PubMed Central (2013). What to eat now? Shifts in polar bear diet during the ice-free season in western Hudson Bay (Gormezano & Rockwell, Ecology and Evolution, doi:10.1002/ece3.740).
5. University of California, Santa Cruz (2018). Polar bears finding it harder to catch enough seals to meet energy demands (on Pagano et al. 2018, Science, doi:10.1126/science.aan8677).
6. Polar Bears International (2024). Can polar bears adapt to longer summers on land?.
7. IUCN SSC Polar Bear Specialist Group (2015). IUCN Red List: polar bear (Vulnerable, 2015).
8. Parks Canada (Wapusk National Park). Handling an encounter: polar bear safety.

Sources checked 15 September 2026.