Scientists have discovered that polar bears have smelly feet and this offers the animals some advantages particularly in their natural habitat where they often have to traverse alone over wide, barren and icy areas.
The carnivorous animals have scent-producing glands in their feet and this allows them to distribute scent wherever they walk allowing them to leave behind chemical trails while they trudge through the Arctic snow.
The scent the animals leave behind offers valuable information to other bears that sniff them as well as allow the animals to mark their territories and communicate with other bears over immense distances. Polar bears get hints from these chemical trails to track certain individuals such as a potential mate, which they tend to do during the spring mating season.
To investigate the polar bear's use of chemical communication, Megan Owen, from the Institute for Conservation Research at the San Diego Zoo Global and colleagues, sampled the pedal scents left behind by more than 200 polar bears that live in the wild and then had these scents sniffed by 26 adult male and female polar bears, most of whom were born in the wild but already live in 10 different zoos in the U.S. at the time of the study.
The researchers found that that the zoo bears were particularly interested to the scents left by the wild bears during springtime with the male bears especially interested in the bears of the opposite sex that are ready to mate. The findings mean that the animals use their smelly feet to send over information about themselves to other bears particularly at certain times of the year.
"Pedal scent, regardless of origin, conveys information to conspecifics that may facilitate social and reproductive behavior, and that chemical communication in this species has been adaptively shaped by environmental constraints of its habitat," the researchers wrote in their study published in the Journal of Zoology on Nov. 3.
The ability to leave behind their scents is particularly helpful as polar bears typically wander alone making it less common for them to meet other bears. With their solitary behavior, sniffing their way through a potential mate could be crucial during breeding season. The bears also get clues from scent to avoid bears that can potentially hurt them or those that may compete with them for their food.
The researchers also expressed concern that with climate change and diminishing sea ice fractures, the bears can possibly lose track of each other.
