2. Unusual Facts About Polar Bears By Lucy Venn

3. Polar Bears Are Not White! Polar bears may look white, but looks can be deceiving. The bear’s outer hairs (called guard hairs) are actually see- through and its undercoat is really colourless.

4. Polar Bears Are Not White! So why do polar bears look white? Well, inside each guard hair is a pocket of air. When sunlight hits a polar bear’s outer coat, all of the wavelengths of light bounce off these air pockets, causing the polar bear to appear white.

5. Polar Bears Are Not White! But even this look can change. Depending on the time of year and the position of the sun, polar bears can look yellow as well as brown. Sometimes the ones in captivity even turn green thanks to algae growing inside their guard hairs.

6. Polar Bears Are Not White! If you shave all that fur away, you’ll discover the polar bear’s true colour. Under their shaggy, colourless coat, the polar bear’s skin is actually black. This black skin absorbs the heat from the sun, which keeps the bear warm in the cold arctic climate.

7. Polar Bears Are Good Swimmers Polar bears have huge webbed paws that are perfect for swimming. Polar bears on average can swim non-stop for 1oo kilometres ( 60 miles.) Some polar bears have been recorded as far as 321 kilometres (200 miles) away from shore! Due to melting ice, a mother polar bear and her cub set out across the Beaufort Sea to find a new home. The mother bear swam 680 kilometres (426 miles) over nine days! Sadly her cub died and she lost 22% of her body weight.

8. Polar Bears Are Becoming Cannibals Polar bears aren’t picky eaters, but they prefer seal. Due to the intensity of climate change, the ice has been increasingly melting, depriving the polar bears of their hunting grounds. As catching seals becomes more difficult, the bears have started to look for other food sources, including raiding birds’ nests - but a few eggs aren’t going to fill them up. So polar bears have turned to be cannibalism!

9. Polar Bear Liver Can Kill You! The Inuit people eat almost every part of the polar bear except for the liver. It’s not because polar bear liver is gross, but because it can kill you! In 1596, a group of European explorers found this out the hard way. After eating polar bear liver, the explorers were struck with a mysterious illness that made them sleepy and irritable. Their vision became blurry, their bones and heads ached and they started being sick. Their skin then started to all peel off and they fell into deep comas. Polar bear liver is so dangerous because its full of vitamin A. In small amounts, vitamin A is good for you and aids growth. But in large doses, it can make a human liver swell to deadly proportions.

10. Polar Bears Preformed In Ancient Rome! The ancient Romans had a thing for blood sport. While the gladiator games are the best-known Roman pastime, the mob enjoyed watching animals die as well. These gory shows usually involved hunters facing off against a wide selection of deadly animals. However some of the animals they put together were not always fair fights. According to Roman poet Calpurnius Siculus, the Romans would flood an amphitheatre and then fill it with seals. They would then release polar bears and it left them with a literal blood bath. (YUCK!)

11. Thank You for watching! By Lucy Venn