"Health freak" polar bear steals toothpaste
Date: 31-Aug-01
Country: NORWAY
"Maybe he felt he had bad breath after eating seal all summer," joked Arne Kristoffersen, owner of Svalbard Wildlife Service, the tour operator whose camp was trampled.
Fourteen tourists and guides from Norway, Sweden and Italy, came to the camp on the Arctic island of Spitsbergen last week to find the bear had knocked over tents, bitten through a tube of toothpaste and sucked out its contents.
Polar bears' teeth are often yellow, unlike their snow-white fur. The bear, probably aged two, had also popped vitamin-C pills. Dried meat hanging from the roof of one large tent and other food within reach were untouched.
Kristoffersen told Reuters that the bear was probably driven simply by curiosity. "When bears can eat seals they avoid other foods," he said. "We put a dead reindeer near some polar bear once and they didn't touch it. But they like trying new things."
