You’re standing on the edge of the Arctic tundra. It’s quiet. Then, you see it—a white, fuzzy mountain moving across the horizon. You’ve probably seen the photos, but honestly, nothing prepares you for the sheer scale of these animals. It’s one thing to say they’re big; it’s another to realize a single paw is the size of a dinner plate.
But let’s get specific. Do you know how much a polar bear weighs? If you guessed "a lot," you're technically correct, but the numbers are way more extreme than most people realize. We aren't just talking about a heavy animal; we're talking about the heavyweight champion of the land-predator world.
The Heavyweight Stats: Males vs. Females
When we talk about weight, the first thing you have to understand is that the gender gap in the polar bear world is massive. It’s not like humans where men are slightly larger on average. Male polar bears, or boars, are absolute units compared to the females (sows).
The Big Guys
An average adult male typically clocks in between 600 and 1,200 pounds. That’s basically the weight of a small car. If you find a particularly successful male in a region with plenty of seals, he might tip the scales at 1,500 pounds or more.
Standing on their hind legs, these males can reach 10 feet tall. Imagine that. A 1,200-pound predator that can peer into your second-story window.
The Ladies
Females are much smaller, usually weighing between 400 and 700 pounds. However, there is a huge caveat here: pregnancy.
When a female is prepping for a long winter in a maternity den, she needs to be "polar bear rich"—which means being loaded with fat. A pregnant female can actually double her body weight before entering a den. She might go from 450 pounds to 900 pounds in a single season just to ensure she has enough energy to nurse her cubs without eating for months.
From 1 Pound to 1,000: The Cub Growth Spurt
It’s one of the craziest facts in nature. A newborn polar bear cub is tiny.
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Basically, they weigh about 1 to 1.5 pounds at birth. They are blind, toothless, and look like little white rats.
But polar bear milk is incredibly rich—about 33% fat. For comparison, human breast milk is around 3% to 5% fat. Because of this high-calorie diet, those tiny 1-pound cubs grow at an alarming rate. By the time they emerge from the den in the spring, they’ve already ballooned to 20 or 25 pounds.
Within two years, they are effectively teenagers, and by the time they hit adulthood at age five or six, they’ve multiplied their birth weight by a factor of nearly a thousand.
The Record Breaker: The Kotzebue Behemoth
Everyone wants to know about the biggest one ever.
In 1960, a male polar bear was recorded in Kotzebue Sound, Alaska. This wasn’t just a big bear; it was a freak of nature. It weighed a staggering 2,209 pounds.
To put that in perspective, that bear weighed as much as 11 average-sized adult men combined. It stood over 11 feet tall. While most bears today don't reach those "megafauna" levels due to changing environmental conditions and hunting pressures, it shows the biological potential of the species when food is infinite.
Why Does the Weight Change So Much?
If you weighed a polar bear in April and then again in August, the numbers would look totally different.
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Their weight is tied to the sea ice.
- Spring (The Feast): This is when the ice is thick, and seal pups are everywhere. Bears gorge themselves, sometimes eating only the blubber of the seal and leaving the rest. They can gain several pounds of fat per day.
- Summer (The Fast): As the ice melts, bears often have to move to land. There isn't much to eat on land. They enter a state of "walking hibernation," where their metabolism slows down, and they live off those fat reserves.
- The 50% Rule: A bear can easily lose 50% of its body weight during the summer fast.
This is why "average" weights are so hard to pin down. A 1,000-pound bear in the spring might be a 500-pound bear by the time the first snow falls in autumn.
Is Climate Change Making Them Skinnier?
Sorta. It’s complicated.
Researchers like those at Polar Bears International and the University of Washington have been tracking bear weights for decades. In some populations, like the Southern Hudson Bay bears, the average weight has definitely dropped.
Why? Because the ice is melting earlier.
If the "buffet" closes two weeks early every year, the bears don't have enough time to pack on the 1,200 pounds they need to survive the summer. Skinny bears have fewer cubs. Skinny mothers have a harder time producing that high-fat milk. It’s a ripple effect that starts with the scale.
Polar Bears vs. Other Heavyweights
You might wonder how they stack up against the famous Kodiak brown bears of Alaska.
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Honestly, it’s a toss-up.
On average, a Kodiak bear can actually be heavier because they have access to consistent, high-calorie food like salmon and berries. However, the maximum size of a polar bear usually exceeds the maximum size of a Kodiak. Polar bears are longer and taller, while Kodiaks are "boxier" and more muscular in the shoulders.
In the battle of the scales, the polar bear usually wins the "largest land carnivore" title, even if some individual brown bears give them a run for their money.
Actionable Insights: What You Can Do
Knowing how much a polar bear weighs isn't just a trivia fact; it's a health metric for the Arctic. If the weights go down, the population is in trouble.
- Support Sea Ice Research: Organizations like the WWF or Polar Bears International use weight data to lobby for habitat protection.
- Carbon Footprint: It sounds cliché, but sea ice is literally the "ground" these bears walk on. Reducing personal emissions helps keep the "buffet" open longer for these heavyweights.
- Travel Responsibly: If you go on a polar bear safari in Churchill, Manitoba, choose operators that are Carbon Neutral certified and don't disturb the bears during their sensitive fasting periods.
Keep an eye on the numbers. In the world of the Arctic, weight isn't just a number—it's the difference between life and death.
To get a better sense of how these animals live, you might want to look into the 19 sub-populations of polar bears, as each group has slightly different average weights based on their specific local diet of ringed vs. bearded seals.
Check the most recent 2026 population assessments from the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group for the latest data on how specific regions like the Chukchi Sea are faring compared to the Beaufort Sea groups.