Tiny “fingers” may help polar bears get a grip.
Like the rubbery nubs on the underside of child socks, microstructures on the bears’ paw pads supply some further friction, scientists report November 1 within the Journal of the Royal Society Interface. The pad protrusions could maintain polar bears from slipping on snow, says Ali Dhinojwala, a polymer scientist on the University of Akron in Ohio who has additionally studied the sticking energy of gecko ft (SN: 8/9/05).
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Nathaniel Orndorf, a supplies scientist at Akron who focuses on ice, adhesion and friction, was within the work Dhinojwala’s lab did on geckos, however “we can’t really put geckos on the ice,” he says. So he turned to polar bears.
Orndorf teamed up with Dhinojwala and Austin Garner, an animal biologist now at Syracuse University in New York, and in contrast the paws of polar bears, brown bears, American black bears and a solar bear. All however the solar bear had paw pad bumps. But the polar bears’ bumps regarded slightly totally different. For a given diameter, their bumps are typically taller, the group discovered. That further peak interprets to extra traction on lab-made snow, experiments with 3-D printed fashions of the bumps recommend.
Until now, scientists didn’t know that bump form may make the distinction between gripping and slipping, Dhinojwala says.
Polar bear paw pads are additionally ringed with fur and are smaller than these of different bears, the group studies, variations which may let the Arctic animals preserve physique warmth as they trod upon ice. Smaller pads typically imply much less actual property for grabbing the bottom. So extra-grippy pads may assist polar bears profit from what they’ve received, Orndorf says.
Along with bumpy pads, the group hopes to review polar bears’ fuzzy paws and quick claws, which could additionally give the animals a nonslip grip.