There is a widespread belief that Arctic predators hide their black noses for camouflage purposes so that they are not visible against the background of ice. We figured out whether there are observations that confirm this assumption.

Against the background of the whitish-yellow fur of a large predator, the black nose really stands out. The indigenous people of the North allegedly toldthat during a hunt, polar bears hide it with their front paw, and thus become less noticeable to potential prey. This legend was also reflected in the Soviet cartoon about Umka, where the mother bear speaks to the main character when he is trying to catch a fish: “Cover your nose with your paw, it will give you away. You are all white, but your nose is black.”

In his book “Born under the Polar Sun”, Northern researcher Anatoly Kochnev disassembles myths associated with the hunting methods of polar bears. He says that he more than once observed how animals cover their nose with their front paw, but this always happened during sleep or rest: “The reason for this action was severe frost or wind, during which the bare and wet bear’s nose vulgarly froze and was warmed up with the help of its paws. Dogs do exactly the same thing, curling up in cold weather and hiding their nose in their fur.”

With a Russian colleague I agree Canadian zoologist Ian Stirling. In 1973, he and several colleagues observed polar bears on Devon Island for two weeks and recorded 288 cases of these animals being hunted. “In none of the cases was it observed that the front paw covered the conspicuous black nose,” Stirling emphasized in his article about the expedition.

Although bears do not hide their black noses when hunting, they may resort to other camouflage methods. According to Stirling, in 13% of cases the animals hid behind uneven ice, bending slightly while moving. The researchers emphasize that in none of these observations was hunting successful. Kochnev adds: “I had to see how bears, finding themselves in a crowd of several hundred seals, dispersed most of them in this manner, without catching a single one.”