Looking at polar bear butts for super-bug clues

Thanks, professor, but I still prefer a bidet. Image via Wikipedia

You know you’re doing science when your work involves wiping the butts of wild polar bears and rooting through their crap.

Scientists want to know if mammals are getting drug-resistant microbes from human-created antibiotics or if the growth of drug resistance in bugs somehow is part of natural evolution.

One test is to see what’s happening in the guts of mammals we have very little interaction with. Like, oh, maybe, polar bears in the Arctic.

Trine Glad, from the University of Tromsø, Norway, led a study that examined feces samples from five polar bears and rectal swabs from another five polar bears between 2004 and 2006.

via Polar bear droppings advance superbug debate.

According to Glad, the colons of the bears sampled seem pretty near pristine. That is, they don’t harbor the troublesome microbes that other mammals in close proximity to us are getting.

Her team’s work touches on the impact we are having on the animals around us and on the evolution of species — in this case, gastrointestinal bacteria.