August M
Photographer captures surreal bear ‘occupation’ on remote island
Photographer captures surreal bear ‘occupation’ on remote island
Polar bears take over Soviet-era weather station in Russia’s Far East
According to the Daily Star, eerie new photos show polar bears roaming the remains of a Soviet weather station on Kolyuchin Island in Russia’s Chukchi Sea.
The remote facility was abandoned in the early 1990s following the collapse of the Soviet Union and now serves as an unlikely shelter for dozens of the animals. The pictures of the polar bears shown in the gallery are illustrative and not the actual animals referenced.
Drone captures chilling scenes of bears inside crumbling buildings
Photographer Vadim Makhorov captured the images using a drone while filming the island’s landscape. “Bears are no strangers to the feeling of comfort and cosiness,” he wrote in a Facebook post. “They perceive homes as shelter.”
The images show the animals peering through shattered windows of the decaying outpost.
‘Cute but deadly’— bears seen calmly occupying buildings
“Polar bears are extremely dangerous predators,” Makhorov noted, “but why do they look so cute and friendly in photos?” The Daily Star reports.
The photos have drawn attention for their surreal contrast — the raw power of the animals against the backdrop of Soviet-era decay.
Not the first polar bear ‘occupation’ of human territory
According to the Daily Star, this isn’t the first time polar bears have overrun a remote Arctic station.
In 2016, seven bears surrounded a team of researchers at a weather site on another Russian island, killing one of the team’s dogs and smashing windows before being driven off by a helicopter and flares from a passing ship.
Polar bears rarely attack humans — but they can
The animals are a protected species and generally avoid humans, but fatal encounters do occur.
In 2024, a worker at a government radar site in the Canadian Arctic was killed by a pair of polar bears, the report notes.
AI chatbot reacts to polar bear ‘takeover’ with cold humour
Asked for a response to the images, ChatGPT told the Daily Star: “It’s like a scene out of a polar bear geopolitical thriller.” It jokingly described the scene as “phase one of the Great Polar Bear Takeover Timeline,” poking fun at the bears’ unexpected photogenic presence.
‘Propaganda instinct’ and arctic ‘soft power’, says AI
“They didn’t just occupy the station — they posed for drone photos. That’s pure propaganda instinct,” ChatGPT added. “Viral images of polar bears ‘taking back’ the Arctic show the world who’s really in charge of the frozen north.”
Bears as diplomats? AI imagines ‘ice road confederation’
The chatbot went on to speculate — tongue firmly in cheek — that the bears might “establish ‘ice road’ routes connecting weather stations into a Polar Bear Confederation,” or perhaps “begin covert meetings with walrus emissaries” and “send reconnaissance seals to map the North Sea oil rigs.”
This article is made and published by auk1, which may have used AI in the preparation
