Take off to the Great White North where we prowl around with an animal expert to learn all we can about polar bears!

But first, let’s introduce our guest for this episode!

Adam Morris is a wildlife and environmental toxicologist, working as a “postdoctoral fellow” on campus at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario. He works with Environment and Climate Change Canada (like the EPA in the United States). His two main projects are studying polar bear health and how the considerable number of organic contaminants found  in the bears is affecting their physiology and, how climate change affects the long-term trends of contaminants of concern in seabirds, fish, polar bears and caribou. He’s also heavily involved in outreach, education and scientific training of the Indigenous people of the Arctic.

During his PhD, he studied the polar-bear ringed seal food chain (including those animals, fish, plankton, algae and water) as well as the caribouand wolf food chain, how contaminants like pesticides and industrial chemicals like plasticizers and flame retardants are accumulated in those animals, and how the ecology of the food chains works. He traveled all over the Arctic to get samples and work with the Indigenous people in their communities – ski-doing all over the sea-ice, hunting seals, fishing, sampling water, etc. He even fulfilled his childhood dream of researching sharks, when he got a chance to see Greenland sharks during a sampling trip on Eastern Baffin Island.

You can find him on Twitter at @adamdmorris!

Adam, Paul and Donna had a super time recording this episode, we hope you enjoy it!

Transluscent fur, invisible to thermal imaging? Polar Bear SUPER POWERS!

Trick or treat! Smell my feet!