Strawberry ice cake with herring - pics

[Kadie]

Polar bear 'Arktos' holds a strawberry ice cake with herring in its mouth at the open-air enclosure at the zoo in Hannover, western Germany, on March 29, 2012. After two years Arktos is going to leave the zoo to make a special trip to the wild Life Park in Shotland, where he is going to meet a polar bear female.

[murielm99]

1. He's cuuuute!

[Chan790]

2. Mildly skeptical that nature's largest land carnivore likes strawberries.

I mean polar bears; unlike their brown, grizzly and black omnivorous cousins; are solely carnivores.

[A Simple Game]

6. Not a problem, YOU tell him he can't have anymore strawberries! n/t

[Kadie]

7. LOL!

[TorchTheWitch]

3. MY cake! MYYYYYYYYYYYYY cake!

MINE!

[Bucky]

4. He needs to find a shampoo that can take the yellow out of that silver hair.

No wonder it takes him two years to get a date.

[Chan790]

5. I realize you're joking about, but...

did you know that each hair of polar bear fur is actually clear?

Each hair is an oily translucent strand like a fiber-optic cable, their ability to transfer light (and thus thermal-radiation) acts as a means of more-effectively warming the bear while also providing insulation in the regular way fur does. The high sebum (fatty oils created in the skin) content makes the fur repel water and dry faster so the bear doesn't catch hypothermia or freeze to death from swimming in freezing-temperature water.

The browning/pigmentation occurs in warmer months and climates to reduce the efficiency of the thermal-transfer so the bear does not overheat.

The whole polar bear climate-conditioning system is both complex and amazing. (This is the stuff I learn being dragged to every east-coast zoo by zoo-aficionado parents.)

[Bucky]

8. Data filed away for future bar rants

This is pretty intriguing. Nature is zany.

[petronius]

9. And underneath all of that, IIRC, they have black skin...