A very special someone once told me a story (I’ll try my best not to butcher it):

A polar bear noticed that his father was wearing a necklace. 
“Where did you get that?” he asked. 
“It’s not important,” his father replied. “What is, is that there are these creatures that walk on two legs. You will see them someday. And when you do, stay far away from them.”

One day, the polar bear was out catching seal. He spotted the two-legged creatures, also looking for seal. He noticed they were not very good at hunting.

“Father!” he said, running to him. “I saw the two-legged creatures! They are not strong enough to catch seal. What is there to worry about?
“Stay far away from them,” his father advised.

On another day, the polar bear was playing on the sea ice when he spotted the two-legged creatures again. This time, he walked a few steps towards them. He noticed that they were much smaller than he was.

“Father!” he said, running to him. “I saw them again! I can easily swat both their legs with only one of my mine. What is there to worry about?”
“Stay far away from them,” his father advised.

Some time later, the polar bear spotted the two-legged creatures again. He decided—just once—to see how close he could get to watch them more closely. As he approached, one of the creatures looked up and noticed him. 

Suddenly, three creatures with four legs and four eyes appeared, buzzing around him.
As humans, do you ever wonder why we are afraid of bees? It doesn’t make much sense—they’re much smaller than we are—yet when they fly and buzz around us, we try to swat them away, and sometimes even run. Polar bears often feel this way toward huskies—whose spotted fur on their faces resembles eyes.

As the polar bear became startled, he felt a prick on the side of his belly. When he looked down, he saw a few spots of blood.

He fell asleep.

When he awoke, he returned home to his father and said “Look, pa. Now I have a necklace too.”

The U.S. Geological Survey just released a video that was filmed using cameras attached to a polar bear necklace (after considerable re-design to avoid any harmful effects). Try these polar bear goggles on for size!

They play with their food (or thaw out what's too cold). They neck their girlfriends. 

The folks at USGS (Pagano et al. 2010) recently published a paper evaluating remote biopsy-darting as a less invasive/ demanding, cheaper, and safer alternative to conventional mark-recapture surveys of polar bears. This is not unlike what the GN has also been up to.This technique involves shooting bears with darts and dyes (to avoid re-sampling) to obtain hair, skin, and adipose (fat) tissue. Once a bear is spotted and targeted, the darts fall off of the individuals sampled (who presumably resume their ways) and are then retrieved---all in less than 10 minutes. The samples obtained from these darts could provide >90% success rates in genotyping (identifying) and genetically sexing individual bears; adipose tissues also provide fatty acid signatures for indicators of body condition/ health. This novel method of sampling has direct implications for the appeal of telomeric ageing if we are able to accurately and/or reliably age bears from biopsy tissues.