Polar bears are well protected by several layers of fur. The fur not only prevents them from catching cold during swimming, it also camouflages the bear. The polar bear’s fur isn’t actually white, it’s transparent and hollow. The fur only appears white. Now it’s time to study how many layers of fur do polar bears have on its body. We will also discuss the size of each of these furs.
How Many Layers of Fur Do Polar Bears have?
- Polar bears have two layers of fur. The internal furs measuring up to 2 inches (5 cm) in length are not only fine—they are dense too.
- The outer layer of fur is called guard hair and they are longer than the dense underfur.
- The guard hair of a polar bear reaches a length of about 6 inches (15 cm). This shows that the guard hairs are three times the size of underfur.
- Nonetheless, guard hairs do not seem to have equal length all over the bear’s body. The biggest guard hairs are present on the adult male’s forelegs averaging up to 17 inches (43 cm) in length.
- That is to say that biggest guard hairs are seven to eight times the length of the underfur.
- The diameter of the underfur is about 0.0008 (<20 µm) inches while the guard hairs measure around 0.002 to 0.008 inches (50 – 200 µm).
- There is a cuticle layer that occurs on all the polar bear’s fur which indeed helps in defining the particular species.
