The bug
In the folder minecraft:textures/entity/bear, there is only one texture, making the folder redundant; polarbear.png.
However, panda bears, as pandas are sometimes known in real life, don't have their texture folder (entity/panda) in the bear folder, despite being species of bears themselves.
A way to fix this would be to either remove the bear folder and put the polar bear texture only in the entity folder, or to put entity/panda, in the bear folder.
Can confirm in 1.17.1.