Man leaps on polar bear to defend wife from attack

A man in Canada has suffered serious injuries to his arm and legs after leaping onto a polar bear who lunged at his wife.

Police in First Nations community of Fort Severn, Ontario, said the couple were attacked outside their home in the early hours of Tuesday.

They had left their house before 5am to look for their dogs when they spotted the bear on their driveway, reports the Nishnawbe Aski Police Service.

The animal then lunged at the woman who slipped to the ground, according to officers.

Her husband responded by leaping onto the bear in an attempt to prevent it attacking her, but it turned on him instead.

He suffered serious, but non-life-threatening, injuries to his arm and legs and is expected to recover.

"A neighbour arrived with a firearm and shot the bear several times. The bear retreated to a nearby wooded area where it died from its injuries," police said in a statement.

Officers were dispatched to the address following reports of gunfire.

The statement added police patrolled the area "to ensure no other bears were roaming the community".

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Attacks are rare

In August, two polar bears killed a worker at a remote Arctic radar station. But attacks by the animals are rare.

A 2017 study by the Alaska Science Center, published in Wildlife Society Bulletin, documented 73 attacks by wild polar bears between 1870 and 2014.

There were 20 deaths recorded during that period in Canada, Greenland, Norway, Russia, and United States, mostly caused by "nutritionally stressed adult male polar bears".

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has described polar bears as a "threatened species" because of the loss of sea ice resulting from climate change.

"Polar bears are increasingly spending longer periods on land, where they are often attracted to areas where humans live," it said.