Google Gets Up Close And Personal With Polar Bears Using Street View Cameras

In the past Google has taken Street View into the inside of an Amsterdam Barge (which just happens to be the HQ of the startup MobyPicture) and the inside of Doctor Who’s Tardis.

Now it’s going there again with stunning Street View pictures of polar bears in their natural habitat, just in time for International Polar Bear Day today. Shot in Churchill, Manitoba – apparently ‘the Polar Bear Capital of the World’ – and collaborating with Polar Bears International, Google mounted the Street View Trekker camera on a ‘Tundra Buggy’ and took Google Maps onto Canada’s tundra to collect 360 degree Street View imagery of polar bears on the tundra – their natural habitat.

But there’s also a serious side. Bringing Street View to Canada’s tundra establishes what they say is a “baseline record of imagery” associated with specific geospatial data. That’s the kind of data that can later protect this amazing creature.

Pretty cool stuff if we do say so ourselves.