… Well, kind of.
At EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum, we naturally have a vested interest in those that claim Irish heritage. Over 70 million people across the globe with Irish roots, which speaks volumes to the impact that the mass emigration of Irish people has had across the world.
As a result of our research, we’ve found that huge celebrities such as Shania Twain, Will Ferrell, Tom Cruise, Rihanna, and so many more claim Irish heritage within their family trees, and just when we thought we’d discovered all there was to know, we came across this little fact about a certain Arctic animal that has a bit of Irish in its DNA.
It turns out that polar bears – yes, literal polar bears – have Irish descent, tracing back as far as the last ice age. This fact was discovered through research from the Smurfit Institute of Genetics, led by Professor Dan Bradley, that found that the female ancestor of all living polar bears was actually an Irish brown bear that lived tens of thousands of years ago.
Brown bears have not existed in Ireland for 3,000 years; however, their DNA was collected from a cave overlooking Benbulben in County Sligo; given the cool temperatures in caves, the genetic material managed to survive all this time, allowing for today’s scientists to evaluate it.
During the last ice age, Ireland was covered in sheet ice, with an ice shelf which extended out into the north Atlantic. This seems to have allowed polar bears and Irish brown bears to overlap and mate.
Professor Beth Shapiro of the Pennsylvania State University said this of the discovery:
“We found that brown bears and polar bears, which are hybridising or crossbreeding today in the wild, have been hybridising opportunistically throughout the last 100,000 years and probably longer.”
Essentially this research showed that 10 Irish brown bears from the ice age had the maternal DNA that is now seen in every modern day polar bear, but is notably absent in the modern day brown bear.
Dr Ceiridwen Edward, formerly of Trinity College, was the lead author on the paper documenting this discovery, published in Currently Biology, and she said this of the findings:
“It’s amazing to think that Irish brown bears are the ancestors of the modern maternal polar bear lineage. As the hybridisation between the two species occurred at a time when their home ranges overlapped, most likely during environmental stress, this has implications for polar bears in today’s climate.”
So, there you are, just when we thought we couldn’t be surprised anymore by those who claim Irish heritage, we find out something like this. We would welcome the return of polar bears to our shores, although possibly not the weather conditions required to keep them happy.
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