I knew they were big bears but not TWICE A HUMAN size! I didn’t even google this image for the polar bear I wanted to see how big a black bear is.
guess I’m never going to Antarctica!
edit: okay we got ANOTHER TIL. Apparently polar bears don’t live in Antarctica!
…I need to watch more nature documentaries…
This has come up before on lemmy.
Wouldn’t a better translation given the context be something like the place opposite to the place where there are bears? It’s not like the Greeks somehow intuited that there was such a place and that there would be no bears there.
It’s the place opposite /ursa major/ (the great bear constellation, in the northern sky.) The name has nothing to do with actual bears (that’s just good luck.)
It’s more of a translation-based mnemonic device, really