A polar bear has been found in emaciated appearance and is unlikely to survive long. It has been estimated that the female bear got injured while hunting a walrus and the wounds led to a struggle to find food. Nature photographer Kerstin Langenberger captured the animal on camera.

Langenberger said the picture has symbolized the plight of the polar bear. Based in Germany, Langenberger posted the photograph of the ‘horribly thin’ injured bear on Facebook previous month. The image has been shared over 41,000 times.

She captured the photography of the poor bear in Norway's Svalbard region, a group of islands in the Arctic Ocean. It is the region wherein tourists generally visit to see polar bears in their natural habitat. She claimed that the image is the also a proof of the retreating sea ice, which according to her is affected by global warming.

She wrote that females are mainly affected because they tend to stay on the pack ice along with their young ones and have an increasing struggle to find food.

Contrary to this, Ian Stirling, a polar bear researcher at the University of Alberta in Canada, told the website Mashable that people need to be more careful regarding blaming climate change for the bear's condition. He mentioned that the bear was more likely to be old, sick or hurt and was not starving due to lack of prey or ice. Stirling said the animal weight loss could be because of the injury.

As per the estimations of the Norwegian government, as of 2004, there were around 3000 polar bears in the Svalbard and Barents Sea region.