Polar bears on ice in Northern Canada.
Dennis Quick/VW Pics/Common Photos Group through Getty Photos
conceal caption
toggle caption
Dennis Quick/VW Pics/Common Photos Group through Getty Photos
Nano-physicist Bodil Holst‘s curiosity in polar bear fur started whereas she was watching a German quiz present.
“I discovered that polar bears are invisible in infrared cameras, which means their fur has the identical temperature as the environment,” says Holst, of the College of Bergen in Norway. She additionally knew that polar bears leap into frigid water once they hunt, coming again onto land to eat their prey. Most mammalian hair can freeze when it will get moist in chilly temperatures — suppose human beards on a frosty winter day. However, Holst observed, polar bear fur didn’t freeze after getting moist.
“I used to be very puzzled,” she says. “After they go into the water and out once more, why do they not get lined in ice?” The work may ultimately result in extra environmentally pleasant alternate options to present anti-ice chemical compounds.
Hair grease is the key, it seems. And it is partly what the fur has — and what it lacks.
Polar bear fur accommodates a cocktail of greasy compounds that make it exceptionally proof against freezing, Holst and her colleagues reported final week in Science Advances.
Holst initially thought that polar bear fur might need structural properties that stop ice from forming. She and her colleagues used high-powered microscopes to zoom in on the fur, however “we could not actually see something particular, they only regarded regular,” Holst says. “We began to suspect, there’s extra to this than construction.”
Whereas the crew was dealing with the fur, they observed it was very greasy. When the crew washed the hair, it largely misplaced its anti-icing properties.
“We realized that this was all the way down to polar bear hair grease, successfully,” Holst says.
The crew then did a collection of molecular analyses to determine what particularly about hair grease would possibly stop ice from forming. They discovered excessive ranges of sure compounds which are particularly proof against freezing, particularly as a result of ice has a more durable time sticking to them.
Polar bear fur additionally lacked a compound known as squalene, the researchers discovered. Squalene is ample in different marine mammals and has properties that make ice keep on with it simply.
This mix makes polar bear fur extremely proof against freezing, Holst says. Lab assessments confirmed that it carried out about in addition to fluorinated ski waxes, which have been banned in Norway for environmental causes. “That was fairly wonderful, that polar bear fur does simply in addition to these very superior snowboarding waxes,” Holst says.
To be further certain that these anti-ice properties are distinctive to polar bear fur grease, versus any hair grease, one in all Holst’s Ph.D. college students took issues into his personal palms.
“He did not wash his hair for fairly a while after which shaved and made somewhat mat of his personal greasy hair,” says Holst. “He examined the anti-icing properties and will see very clearly that human hair, whether or not you wash it or not, is not superb at anti-icing.”
Holst hopes that the analysis would possibly encourage new approaches to concocting anti-icing supplies that might be used for ski waxes, lubricants and even airplane de-icing fluids. However she stresses that her crew is not the primary to determine that polar bear fur has such particular anti-icing properties.
“We did not uncover it,” she says. “It has been identified to Arctic folks for hundreds of years.”
