Aurora Starchild
A documentary got a little wild when a polar bear tried to eat its way into a reporter’s vehicle. Australian reporter Tara Brown, from 60 Minutes, was documenting the plight of polar bears amid the growing climate crisis when her car got stuck in the snow. Then a hungry polar bear came face-to-face with her crew.
Videos by Rare
Climate Change Has Left Polar Bears Starving, on Verge of Extinction
In 2007, Brown was filming a segment for her documentary On Thin Ice. She and her crew traveled to Churchill, Canada, to show how the polar bears were faring.
Polar bears are usually nowhere to be seen in that part of Churchill in the wintertime because they usually go out hunting at sea. But, due to the melting sea ice, polar bears are drowning and starving to death. They use the ice as landing pads on their long hunting journeys for seals. Without the ice, the polar bears have remained on land. Recently, they’ve resorted to cannibalism—which isn’t new but is now, tragically, a rampant occurrence.
Brown and her crew were traveling onshore when the car got stuck in the snow. Then a polar bear walked up to the partially open window. The bear is actually pretty cute, acting much like a dog. It does a little bow and looks longingly into the window. But then it starts gnawing on the side mirror.
The polar bear moves to the front of the car and paws it before returning to the side mirror to see if it’s edible. It’s obviously starving.
“Right now, these windows are starting to feel very thin,” Brown narrates.
The hungry polar bear comes right up to Brown’s window again. “This close, they’re not that cute and cuddly,” she says. The polar bear then starts trying to push against her door. “Jesus Christ” says one of the camera crew members.
Right when everyone was probably about to start peeing their pants, a National Park snowplow came up over a nearby hill. It got the film crew’s car out, and everyone was okay.
As for the polar bears, however, they’re not doing okay… at all. Scientists say that the species is on the verge of collapse unless humans do something to slow down or stop global warming.
