Janice Ruth Teem, age 12, of Gastonia, N. question:

How does the polar bear protect his eyes from the Arctic light?

There are plenty of polar bears in zoos around our land and most of us have had a chance to gape at the shaggy white giants. But these living conditions are very different from the frozen north which is their native home. A few naturalists have been to the Arctic to study the polar bear where he lives. The reports on his home life do not all agree   but everyone admires the mighty fellow.

His scientific name is Thalaretos and it means the sea bear. Most bears like to swim, but this fellow is the champion swimmer, diver and floater of the bear family. He is perhaps more at home in the water than on land. In plain language he is known as the white bear because, though other bears come in various colors, he is always white. He is also known as the polar bear because his native home is the northern polar regions in and around the Attic sea.

Here he lives through months of the long Arctic night when the sun never rises above the horizon. He sleeps through the winter night on the ground and the blizzards soon cover him with a blanket of snow. This is when Mrs. Polar Beer gives birth to her cubs, tiny fellows about ten inches long, blind and almost naked. In . March, the sun pokes a few feeble rays into the sky to announce that the winter night is almost over.

Now the polar bears move out from their icy igloos and trek inland for a feast of grass and green salad food. The cubs are ready and eager to toddle along behind their ma’s tail which is too short to mention. The days get long and through the months of midsummer the sun never sets. Through the long Arctic day the sun beams down bright rays onto ice and snow

The Arctic glare, however, is broken by stretches of water and grubby ice floes. ~ There are patches of land covered with grasses and scrubby bushes. The polar bear and his ancestors have been coping with the Arctic sunlight for countless ages and it does not bother him. Some say that the white giant has poor eyesight and some say he has better eyesight than most bears. In any case, his rather small eyes are set deep in his skull and shaded with masses of shaggy fur. This provides a pair of eye shades for him.

The polar bear is the largest meat eater to hunt on the land. He catches fish, seals and other meaty morsels in the sea   but on land he is a skilled tracker of foxes, birds and baby walrus. Invisible against the snow, he creeps up on his victim. Some naturalists claim that he puts his paws over his black nose to make himself even more invisible against the snow.