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.
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