According to a recent study published in Science Advances, a greasy hair day keeps the ice away — for polar bears, that is.
After examining polar bear fur, an international research team identified what helped keep polar bears ice-free, even in sub-zero temperatures. It all comes down to their greasy fur.
“This work not only represents the first study of the composition of polar bear fur sebum, but it also resolves the question of why polar bears don’t suffer from ice accumulation,” said Richard Hobbs, an assistant professor and Royal Society-Science Foundation Ireland University Research Fellow in Trinity’s School of Chemistry and the AMBER Research Ireland Centre, and senior author of the study, in a press release.
