Polar bears live in very hard conditions on a region where snow storms can reach 120-140 kmh speeds and are covered with snow and ice 12 months of the year. Allah, the Compassionate, created them in such a manner that they can endure these hard conditions.
Almighty Allah is the One Who created all the living beings from nothing and called them into being with awe inspiring details in all of them. This is Allah's art of detail. Allah with His infinite wisdom created systems which humans could not comprehend and could not yet discover their details. He also created further beauties within all of these details which shows His sovereignty and might.
Polar bears, living on the polar region with their weight reaching 800 kg and heights of 2.5 meters, are the evidences of Allah's art of detail. Our Almighty Lord states His flawless power of creation and art in one of the verses of the Qur’an as thus:
"He is Allah – the Creator, the Maker, the Giver of Form. To Him belong the Most Beautiful Names. Everything in the heavens and earth glorifies Him. He is the Almighty, the All-Wise." (Surat al-Hashr, 24)
The details on their skin and hairs
Polar bears have white and thick fur which protects them from the cold since they are living on an area covered with ice. The hairs of its seemingly white colored special fur, which has a 5 cm thickness, are transparent in reality. Each of these hairs, which have fiberoptic properties to prevent heat loss, is like an empty and transparent tube. These tubes transmit the heat from the solar rays to the dark colored hairs and directly onto the skin of the bear and eases the warming of the bear. Also, the 10 cm layer of fat below the skin of the polar bear provides heat insulation. In this way, its fur and skin insulate the bear completely from the cold environment outside. This fur is also suitable for swimming. In the water, these hairs on the fur come together and stick to each other as if the polar bear is wearing a waterproof and soft wet suit.
In this fashion, they can go 2000 km away with a speed of 10-11 km per hour by swimming. Because of the details Almighty Allah created on this creatures skin and hair, polar bears can preserve their 37 degree body temperature for a long time in or outside of the water. There are even times when these creatures bodies are overheated. Due to this reason, most of the time, polar bears rub their bodies on ice to decrease their overheated body temperature.
Another detail which was created for preserving their body temperature
Almighty Allah created polar bears with small ears and small tails. Since their ears and tails are small, their probability to lose heat from the veins on these organs become minimized.
Details which allow polar bears to run fast on ice and swim in icy water
Polar bears are created with all of their equipment to live in a cold environment covered with ice. They posses wide, straight and hairy claws. They grasp the ice surface easily with a vacuum effect thanks to the cavities between the fingers on their feet. They can run very fast on ice surfaces with the nonslip soles of their feet. The weblike structure between their fingers also allows them to swim easily in water and to travel far distances conveniently.
Winter Sleep: A detail which decreases energy usage
One of the means that polar bears use to decrease their energy spending is through Winter Sleep. Especially the expectant mother, she is able to decrease the speed of her metabolism in order not to spend any energy and to be able to allow her babies to eat better. She transforms the fat in her metabolism to protein for 7 months and this allows the babies to eat better. During this 7 month period, she never eats herself. She can decrease her heart rate to 8 bpm from 70 bpm thus slowing her metabolism. In this period, she never eats and is able to satisfy her natural needs. In this way, she doesn’t spend too much energy during the period in which she will give birth to her babies.
The details of the lairs which prevent the babies from being cold
Female polar bears living in the cold environment of Antartica build lairs under the heaps of snow if they are pregnant or giving birth. They otherwise don’t live in a lair. These lairs generally have more then one room and polar bears prepare these rooms professionally on higher levels than the entrance of the lair. In this way, the exiting of warm air from the rooms are prevented. Mother bears build the roof of their lair with a thickness starting from 75 cm to 2 meters. The thickness of the roof acts as a good insulator and keeps the available heat in the lair. The heat in the lair becomes fixed in this way. Researcher Paul Watts, from the Oslo University Norway, put an instrument to the roof of one of these lairs and came across an interesting situation. During this long study, the weather outside decreased to -30 degrees but the heat inside the lair never decreased under 2 or 3 degrees. This miraculous lair emerges without a doubt by the result of inspiration that our Almighty Allah gives to polar bears like He does to all the other animals.
The details in their Eyesight and Smell
In the eyes of the polar bears is a membranous eyelid filter. By means of this filter, they posses a kind of sunglasses from birth and this structure in their eyes protects them from snow blindness. Polar bear must cover long distances for hunting on a vast ice desert. At this time, the polar bear has a sense it can trust. The sense of smell. The nose on the polar bear is rather sensitive. They feed mostly on seals. Seals lives under ice and snow layers but this does not create a problem for the polar bear to find them. Because the smelling sense of polar bears are so sharp, they can sense the smell of a seal easily under 1.5 meters of snow layer or 30 km away. Without a doubt, Almighty Allah created the polar bear in line with its needs with the most perfect design like all other living things.
Result
All the features explained above have great importance for the polar bear to continue its life. Very detailed and flawless structures of the beings on earth reveals the truth clearly that these things cannot occur randomly. Even humans do not have the power to do all these things. Our Almighty Allah is the One Who creates everything flawlessly. In the polar bears system of insulation from the cold and its manner of feeding and manner of using its senses, this truth is clearly obvious. The One Who puts this creature amongst the ice and the One Who creates this creature with the safeguarding equipment according to these circumstances is indeed Almighty Allah. This situation reminds human beings continuously of the greatness of Allah and the power which predestinates situations and behaviors of all beings. This truth is stated in the Qur’an as thus:
And He has made everything in the heavens and everything on the earth subservient to you. It is all from Him. There are certainly signs in that for people who reflect. (Surat al-Jathiyya, 13)
Polar bears are only another one of the limitless evidences of creation of Almighty Allah. Almighty Allah equips all living things with superior properties, most suitable to their living environment, with the ability to continue their life, to breed and the ability to sustain their livelihood. Allah, Who is the Owner of infinite mercy and infinite compassion, graced His mercy and benefaction to all living beings. The properties of living beings are stated for the believers in the Qur’an as thus:
In the heavens and earth there are certainly signs for the believers. And in your creation and all the creatures He has spread about there are signs for people with certainty. (Surat al-Jathiyya, 3-4)
