MOSCOW, February 7. /TASS/. Russian zoologists learned to identify various animals, including polar bears in the Arctic, on satellite images, Academician Vyacheslav Rozhnov of the Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution told a roundtable at TASS, which was devoted to strategy and tasks of complex scientific studies in the Arctic.

"We, of course, are using very actively satellite technologies, not only the tags, which we install on polar bears to track them, and so forth. Those are also satellite images, and I must say we have learned <…> to see white bears in the Arctic on the white snow and ice. Moreover, we have published the first thesis, and our Canadian and American counterparts have followed suit," the scientist said.

He considers the use of satellite imagery for keeping records of animals extremely important - and not only for polar bears in the Arctic. The told the roundtable participants how his colleagues track saiga antelopes in the steppes, and how they distinguish between a saiga and a sheep on a satellite image. As for other polar bear studies, the scientist said that he and his colleagues had compared the courses of infectious diseases and helminthiasis in polar bears in different parts of the Arctic, depending on the degree of human exposure and the appearance of pets there. "We can see completely new diseases that earlier were not typical for the bear," the scientist added.

The academician expressed gratitude to Rosneft for its active support of the Arctic fauna studies. He called for monitoring of the Northern Sea Route to study the biological diversity.