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Old 05-23-2003, 01:10 PM   #1
Undertoad
Radical Centrist
 
Join Date: Jan 2001
Location: Cottage of Prussia
Posts: 31,423
5/23/2003: Bear eats sub



Polar bears, it turns out, are generally kind of dumb. Everything they see represents some kind of food. Although when you're near the north pole, there isn't much that moves that isn't food.

And so when the US submarine Connecticut, in training exercises near the North Pole, poked its sail and rudder through the ice, this bear figured that it was getting a fine treat, perhaps some free whale meat. And it tried to chow down. The crew took these shots via the periscope.



The sub took some minor damage but surely not so much that it affected its operation at all, one would imagine...



To link this up to another thread, apparently one of the subs' jobs is to use sonar to measure the ice thickness to track the effects of global warming. Apparently the warming affects the bears a great deal.
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