Hey folks!

Polar bears are often the first animals we think of when we talk about climate change. And over the years, melting Arctic ice has led scientists to discover something strange about them.

See, polar bears have a pretty specific eating rhythm. Winter is their feast season. That’s when the sea ice is thick and stable, and seals hang around the ice to rest, raise their young, and shed their fur. For polar bears, that’s prime hunting time.

They prey on seals, especially the blubber, and convert all those calories into fat. Those fat reserves are crucial because summer is basically a long fast for them. With less ice around, hunting becomes hard, food gets scarce, and polar bears can lose up to 40% of their body weight just surviving on what they stored earlier.

Which is why climate change spells trouble. As ice melts and sea levels change, polar bears may have to swim longer distances to find food or spend more time on land, slowly burning through their reserves.

But researchers studying polar bears around Svalbard in Norway noticed something unexpected. Despite the region losing sea ice twice as fast as many other polar bear habitats, these bears are actually getting fatter.

So what’s going on?

One thing is diet. These polar bears may have started eating more land animals than they used to. Reindeer, for instance, have made a strong comeback after recovering from years of overhunting by humans. Traditionally, reindeer were just a backup meal — something polar bears turned to during summer when they weren’t hunting seals. But with longer ice-free periods, those backup options are getting used more often.

There’s another possible explanation too. With less ice overall, seals are crowding around the few remaining patches of ice. That means instead of being spread out, they’re packed closer together, which could actually make hunting easier for polar bears in the short term.

But just because polar bears are adapting to climate change, does it mean that they’re doing fine?

Well, not really.

Polar bears are built for Arctic sea ice. They need it to hunt, breed, den, and survive. So when ice retreats, the problem isn’t just for bears. It hits the entire food chain. Seals depend on ice. Fish that seals eat depend on plankton. Plankton that fish eat, feed on algae. And algae thrive only when there’s plenty of ice.

Take the ice away, and the whole system starts to collapse

So yeah, polar bears may be getting fatter right now. But that’s not really a good sign. It’s a sign that they’re improvising. But there may come a point when even adaptation won’t be enough because the very food chain they rely on starts to disappear.

Here’s a soundtrack to put you in the mood…

Reh Gaya by Pratik Gangavane, Gaurav Chatterji and Aasa Singh

You can thank our reader Ujjwal Kumar for this great rec. And if you’d like your recommendation featured too, send them our way, especially hidden gems from underrated Indian artists many of us haven’t discovered yet. We can’t wait to hear them!

What caught our eye this week

The McDonald’s milkshake that was never about milkshake

McDonald’s once faced a surprisingly stubborn problem. Its milkshake sales were flat, and none of the obvious fixes seemed to work.

The company did what most large organisations do when a product underperforms. It asked customers what they wanted, because you know, the customer is always right. 

McDonald’s asked them if the milkshakes were too thin or whether they needed better flavours or different mix-ins, etc. Customers diligently answered these questions, and McDonald’s acted on the feedback. But sales barely inched above.

And this caught the attention of Clayton Christensen. He was a Harvard Business School professor who believed that companies were often asking the wrong questions altogether. So, instead of relying on surveys and opinions, he encouraged researchers to observe what customers actually did.

And in this case, one of his colleagues spent an entire day inside a McDonald’s outlet watching who bought milkshakes, when they bought them, and whether they consumed them inside the restaurant or took them to go, and what else they ordered. 

Soon, he began to notice a pattern that no customer survey had ever revealed.

Around 40% of McDonald’s milkshakes were sold early in the morning. These customers usually came alone, bought only one milkshake, took it with them, and then drove off immediately.

The next morning, the researcher returned to speak with these customers. This time, however, the questions were different. Instead of asking what they liked about the milkshake, he asked why they chose it at that particular moment. And that revealed a very different story.

These customers were dealing with long, boring commutes. They were not hungry when they left home, but they knew they would be by mid-morning. They wanted something that could be consumed with one hand, would not spill or make a mess, would last the entire drive, and would keep them full until lunchtime.

So, given this context, McDonald’s milkshake was not competing with other fast food items. It was competing with bagels that were dry and crumbly, bananas that were squishy, doughnuts that left sticky fingers, and even the monotony of the commute itself.

Once this became clear, the implications for the product were obvious. If the milkshake was meant to last through a long drive, it needed to be thicker. If it was meant to stay engaging over time, it needed more texture, such as chunks of fruit. And if morning commuters were the primary customers, the experience needed to be optimised for quick and easy pickup. 

Once these changes were implemented, milkshake sales skyrocketed 7x than what it was before. And it also explained why all the earlier fixes had failed.

McDonald’s had been trying to improve the milkshake as a product. But the customers were buying it, not as a milkshake, but as a solution to an unrelated problem. Once the company understood the underlying problem people were trying to solve at that moment, the right changes became almost self-evident.

People, after all, do not wake up craving milkshakes. We wake up dreading long commutes, empty stomachs, and boring mornings. The milkshake just happened to be the most convenient way to make that situation a little better.

This eventually became one of Clayton Christensen’s most influential ideas. And today, it is known as the Jobs to Be Done framework taught in business schools worldwide.

Infographic

While we often associate gold with glittering jewellery, the data reveals that in 2025, the biggest chunk of demand actually came from investors seeking a safe harbor for their wealth.

Readers Recommend

This week, our reader Atul Sharma recommends reading Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen.

It imagines what would happen in the minutes and hours after a nuclear missile is launched at the United States.

Through interviews with military and civilian experts, it shows how quickly events could spiral into a full-scale nuclear war and how little time there is to stop catastrophe once the process begins.

Thanks for the recommendation, Atul!

That’s it from us this week. We’ll see you next Sunday!

Until then, send us your book, music, business movies, documentaries or podcast recommendations. We’ll feature them in the newsletter! Also, don’t forget to tell us what you thought of today's edition. Just hit reply to this email (or if you’re reading this on the web, drop us a message at morning@finshots.in).

Don’t forget to share this edition on WhatsApp, LinkedIn and X.