As I wandered the galleries of the Itsanitaq Museum, in Churchill, Canada, one sculpture in particular caught my eye. Tucked among the soapstone and basalt carvings in the sub-Arctic town’s Inuit-and-Indigenous-art collection, the grayish-white piece featured a polar bear, standing on its hind legs and holding a stone boulder. Below, a sleeping walrus appeared entirely unaware of the bludgeoning threat.
I snapped a photo of the bizarre tableau on my iPhone. Months later, I’d largely forgotten about the sculpture when I came across a recently published study titled “Do Wild Polar Bears Use Tools When Hunting Walruses?”
