There’s this myth floating around that polar bear fur is fiber optic.
It’s not. It’s not it’s not it’s not.
The myth goes like this
polar bears are white, but they have to keep warm in the winter.
But white reflects light and heat, so how do they do it?
By having fiber optic fur.
“Fiber optics” are a type of “light pipe” that channels light extraordinarily well, sort of like an electric wire does for electric current.
So, this is supposed to heat them up by channeling light to their black skin.
This is based on research that showed that polar bears are
white to you and me, but don’t emit any ultraviolet (UV) light (they’re black in the ultraviolet).
They thought the UV radiation was being absorbed by fiber optics and transported to the skin. It turns out instead that polar bear
fur just absorbs UV on its own because of what it’s made of.
So this is an example of an early, incorrect science report getting circulated and taking hold in the popular mind.
This myth gets perpetuated by the fact that polar bear fur is hollow.
Fiber optics are also hollow, but not every hollow thing is a fiber optic (this is like the “a square is a rectangle but a rectangle isn’t always a square” thing).
