Animal Adaptations to the Cold Weather - Special Post
Hi there, and welcome back!
In the beautiful animal world, you can find a range of biodiverse organisms thriving in all sorts of temperatures. Personally, I've been extremely cold lately, bundling up under layers and pulling out my beanies and earmuffs.
However, animals don't have fuzzy blankets they can pull from under dozens of covers whenever they need it. While this might seem obvious, animals have to find other ways to keep warm in these chilly months.
So here it is:
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Before we get started, please note that adaptations describe inherited traits that allow organisms to survive. Natural selection leads to adaptations, but evolution always occurs with the unit of the population. Most animals and species don't just evolve randomly!
Also, with these four adaptations come four animals you'll find with them! Enjoy!
1. Staying Warm Blanket-less
Animals don't need an extra layer to coat their bodies because they already have thick layers of fur! With birds, they tend to have warmer feathers. Putting these organisms in places that have the sun shining all year long would be dangerous, however, because these adaptations help them survive in cold environments.
Just like a blanket would, extra coatings of fur or feathers allows an organism to maintain its body heat instead of having it escape in the cold temperatures.
Animals with the adaptation:
- Bison
- Polar Bear
- Some types of donkeys
- Snow leopards
2. Strong Survivors
Finding food is hard for these cold-dwelling creatures, especially predators who thrive on consuming other animals. Luckily, animals like the herbivore arctic hare find other methods to eat food. They dig up plants and twigs from under the snow and gobble them all up.
Other animals need to work most of the time building a shelter. While some animals are lazily grazing, beavers are hard at work building their homes, called lodges. Their hard work pays off in the winter, where we see beavers snuggled up.
Animals with adaptations:
- Squirrels
- Beavers
- Bears
- Snakes
3. Stop the Freeze!
Have you ever heard of an anti-freeze for your car? It helps keep the car engine from freezing up in the winter! And while this may be present in car engines, wood frogs have the ability to release an antifreeze in their bodies. When their body freezes up, the anti-freeze helps them stay alive.
You can read more about this phenomenon and wood frogs here.
Animals with this Adaptation:
- Antarctic fish
- The Snow Flea
- Upis beetle
- Wood frogs
Since I found it really interesting, I'll leave another link for you to look at about the types of animals that use anti-freeze (this one focuses a lot on Antarctic animals).
4. Order Up!
Unlike when you're at a restaurant, animals often need to turn to different hunting techniques or other variations of finding new food to eat. During the winter (as talked about above) it's harder to find these foods. As this article states, the red fox turns from eating fruits and insects in the spring, to eating rodents in the winter. Bobcats eat birds and squirrels during the fall but turn to mice and voles in the winter as well.
Animals with Adaptations:
- Bobcats
- Moose
- Brook trout
- Osprey
Credits to this wonderful brochure on changing diets in the winter.
That's it for this time! If you're interested in learning more, check out other articles above or scroll about around the website! And feel free to take a look at this article I wrote last year that kickstarted the holidays :)
Make sure to stay tuned for the next post, and S.P.A.T!
- The Bookish Elephant
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