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A wildlife photographer has captured amazing photos of polar bears who appear to be doing their own rendition of the waltz or playing a game of patty-cake.

The massive bears went paw-to-paw while standing on their hind legs on the frozen tundra in Churchill, Manitoba, on the southern edge of Canada's Arctic.

While it looks like the juvenile males were practising fancy footwork they were actually play fighting as a horde of camera-happy tourists looked on.

These polar bears aren't ballroom dancing - they are play fighting in front of tourists in the northern town of Churchill, Manitoba in Canada

The amusing moment was captured by tourist Alex Berger, 28, while he visited the town on the western shore of Hudson Bay, which bills itself as the Polar Bear Capital of the World.

He was travelling in a Tundra Buddy, a custom-built coach designed to transport tourists across the frozen ground, when the two bears appeared.

The encounter lasted for around 30 minutes before the animals went their separate ways.

Alex, from Copenhagen, Denmark, said: 'On the third day of the trip the tour bus pulled up and we saw a group of bears play fighting with each other.

Photographer Alex Berger, from Copenhagen, Denmark, said the bears wrestled for 30 minutes before going their separate ways

'Two of the bears, who I believe were juvenile males, started coming closer to us and then stopped about 30 feet away.

'They then began playing fighting again but from some angles it almost looked like they were ballroom dancing.

'They did this for about 20 minutes before eventually walking away and giving each other some space.

'Although polar bears like to play fight it is very easy for them to overheat so they don't have these battles for very long at a time.'

Tourists snapped photos from the safety of a Tundra Buggy, a custom-built coach designed to transport tourists across the frozen tundra

He added: 'Part of me was concerned that after travelling all that way I may only see one bear lying down or something, but I was amazed to photograph something like this. It was fantastic.'

Polar bears are the world's largest land predators and they migrate to Northern Manitoba every autumn to wait for ice to form on the sea.

They spend many months of the year at sea and they prey mainly on seals but will also devour animal carcasses and fish.