How Animals Adapt To Winter

Food, clothing, shoes, blankets, and even quel matelas choisir or which mattress to choose are a few of the things that we humans contemplate on to keep ourselves warm and comfortable particularly on cold and chilly days. Animals, on the other hand, have unbelievable habits, ways, and means on how they could keep themselves warm and comfy since they do not depend on clothing, blankets, or mattresses unlike we humans do.

Animal Hibernation

Scavenging for adequate food during the cold and winter season can be tough and grim for most animals especially when their principal sources of sustenance comes from bugs or green vegetation are insufficient or scarce. To resolve this problem, some animals go into hibernation.

Hibernation is when some animals like bears go into a deep sleep that aids them to save energy and to stay alive throughout the winter season without eating. This keeps the full and warm at the same time. Most of the time, you cannot wake up animals who are in hibernation.

Freezing to Sleep?

Some species like the Alaskan wood frogs also hibernate but in a more extreme level. Instead of slowing down their heart rate so that they don’t need to use so much energy while asleep, these species freeze their body during the course of winter.

During this time, all the bodily functions, this includes the function of the brain and heart, stops, making them basically dead. However, to avert and stop their cells from freezing and to avoid dehydration, glucose in their blood increases. They only come back to life yet again when temperature escalates during springtime.

Other animals such as the fat-tailed dwarf lemur, form fat reserves and taking it from its name, this particular animal uses its tail as storage for fat. Its body mass can rise to as much as 40% which keeps themselves warm and alive throughout winter.

Video: Winter Adaptations