What do animals do when the weather gets cold? They have some unique ways to survive the winter!

In the cold winter, people often shiver with cold. Fortunately, there are various heating devices. But what about wild animals in winter? The first problem they face in winter is how to survive in a low temperature environment, and the second is how to get enough food.

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In nature, most wild animals will change into winter fur or winter feathers in winter to thicken the body's surface insulation layer and reduce body heat dissipation.

Mammals stop growing, reduce their basal metabolic rate, and decrease their activity to reduce their need for food energy.

Some animals survive the harsh winter by hibernating, storing food and migrating.

01 Molting

Every winter, birds and mammals living in temperate and frigid zones often molt their feathers and down .

The ptarmigan is a typical molting bird.

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When winter comes, the male and female birds will change into a white, thick feather. In the spring, when the ice and snow melt, the head, neck and chest of the ptarmigan will change into spring feathers with chestnut brown horizontal stripes. The ptarmigan molts both to keep warm and to hide.

Thunderbird (Image source: Wikipedia)

The Arctic fox is distributed in the Arctic region and has gray-black fur on the upper part of its body in summer.

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In winter, the Arctic fox's entire body is covered with white fur, and there is thick, dense undercoat underneath the guard hairs, which allows it to maintain a certain body temperature even on an ice field at minus 50 degrees Celsius.

Arctic fox (Image source: Wikipedia)

02 Hibernation

One of the well-known ways animals cope with cold temperatures is to hibernate.

In both frigid and temperate zones, cold-blooded animals, including all amphibians and reptiles, hibernate.

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When winter comes, the Chinese giant toads living by rivers, ponds and fields will burrow into the mud or under stones to hibernate. Sometimes they will also burrow into wet mud under grass piles or tree roots to hibernate. Snakes and lizards will burrow under the soil or in natural holes to hibernate during the winter.

Some birds actually hibernate.

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Swifts and nighthawks hibernate in rock caves during the winter.

There are rose-breasted parrots in the Changdu area and the southern part of the Nyingchi area in Tibet. During an investigation in the Changdu area in Tibet, the author learned that in winter, the local rose-breasted parrots will crawl into the holes of big trees, one stepping on the back of another. These rose-breasted parrots will tighten their feathers, stay motionless, not eat or drink, and rely on hibernation to spend the winter.

However, zoologists have not yet conducted specific research on the hibernation habits of rose-breasted parrots.

Rose-breasted parrot (Image source: Wikipedia)

Many mammals living in temperate and frigid zones, such as ground squirrels, hedgehogs, marmots and bears, have the habit of hibernation.

When winter comes, these warm-blooded animals hibernate in underground tunnels, rock caves or tree holes.

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Ground squirrels, hedgehogs and marmots sleep deeply during hibernation. Once these animals enter hibernation, they are not easy to awaken.

Bears hibernate relatively shallowly, and are easier to awaken during hibernation.

Correspondingly, the heartbeat and breathing of animals will slow down during hibernation.

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When a black bear hibernates, its heart rate drops from 40 beats per minute to 10 beats per minute. At the same time, the energy metabolism rate of hibernating animals may drop to an extremely low level. It is reported that the energy metabolism rate of belly snakes during hibernation is only 50% of its energy metabolism rate in summer. The metabolic rate of black bears during hibernation is also only half of that in summer. The energy metabolism rate of birds during hibernation can drop to 2% of that in summer. When ground squirrels, hedgehogs, and marmots hibernate, their energy metabolism rates drop to 1.48%, 2.21%, and 3.09% of their non-hibernation period, respectively.

Due to the low energy consumption, hibernating animals can survive the winter by relying on the fat tissue accumulated in their bodies in autumn.

During this period, since hibernating animals cannot move, their ability to escape harm from natural enemies becomes very poor.

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Some rare and endangered wild animals, such as rose-breasted parrots, black bears and brown bears, are easily captured or hunted during hibernation.

Therefore, in winter, protecting hibernating wild animals is an important part of wildlife conservation work.

03 Food Storage

In order to survive the severe winter when food is scarce, animals in frigid and temperate zones have come up with the idea of ​​"storing food".

Hundreds of species of birds and mammals have the habit of storing food.

In high-latitude areas where the environment changes seasonally, there are many more species of wild animals that have the habit of storing food than in low-latitude areas.

There are many types of food stored by wild animals.

Plant seeds are common objects to be stored.

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Dried berries, mushrooms, sun-dried or freeze-dried meats, etc. can also be stored for a considerable period of time.

Pikas in alpine areas will pile up and store hay in their tunnels before hibernation.

Red squirrels are territorial animals (many animals have their own territories, which are sacred and inviolable). In the boreal coniferous forests, they feed on fir and pine cones. The radius of their territory ranges from 50 to 150 meters, depending on the density of pine trees.

In the northern coniferous forests near the Arctic Circle, red squirrels rely on stored pine cones to survive the long winter. Once they lose their territory and stored pine cones, they will freeze to death in the severe winter.

In deciduous broad-leaved forests, red squirrels feed on acorns, walnuts, oak nuts, etc., and also like to pick and store various mushrooms.

For most food-caching animals, the stored food is vital to the survival of the cacher during a day or a year.

If stored food is lost, the consequences can be fatal to the people who stored it.

In order to facilitate the retrieval of stored food in winter, animals in high-latitude areas often choose places that can be reached in winter and store food in an appropriate manner.

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In late summer and early fall, beavers build food piles by chewing off branches and tree trunks. When winter arrives, they can eat sticks and bark beneath the ice.

Most of the wild animals with the habit of storing food are wild animal species included in the "National List of Terrestrial Wildlife that is Beneficial or Has Important Economic and Scientific Research Value" (referred to as the "Three Lists") recently promulgated by the State Forestry Administration.

When it comes to protecting these wild animals, we should pay attention to protecting their food resources and habitats.

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Many forest areas in my country have the habit of collecting pine nuts in autumn, which is undoubtedly "competing for food" with wild animals that eat pine nuts.

04Migration​

Migration is one of the habits of animals.

In nature, in addition to birds migrating in winter, many animals have the habit of migrating in winter.

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When the water temperature drops in winter, some thermophilic fish will migrate to waters with suitable water temperatures to overwinter.

After spawning in the Bohai Bay, yellow croakers migrate to the Yellow Sea to spend the winter in November every year.

Gray trevally lives in shallow seas.

The Pacific population of gray stingrays spends the summer in the Bering and Siberian Seas.

When the temperature drops and winter comes, the gray stingray will migrate south to the Mexican waters to spend the winter.

When the weather warms up next year, the gray sturgeon will return to the Bering Sea and the Siberian Sea.

The migration distance of the gray tattoo reaches 16,000~18,000 kilometers.

Fur seals are a type of aquatic mammal that also has the habit of long-distance migration for the winter. Fur seals breed on islands between East Siberia and Alaska and winter in the California waters. Fur seals begin their wintering migration in October every year and arrive at their wintering sites two months later.

Source: Wikipedia

Wild animals living in the mountains also have the habit of seasonal vertical migration to overwinter.

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When winter comes and snow begins to accumulate on the tops of the mountains, the argali, blue sheep and red deer living in the mountains will move to the low mountains with lower altitudes, higher temperatures and less snow.

Giant pandas live in bamboo forests at altitudes above 2,000 meters. When winter comes, they migrate to lower altitude areas. However, due to the increase in population, lower altitude slopes have been reclaimed as farmland, and many of the giant pandas' winter habitats no longer exist. In the mountainous areas with steep slopes in the giant panda distribution area, returning farmland to forest is an urgent task for giant panda protection.

Among the wild animals that rely on seasonal migration to overwinter, the most numerous species are birds.

Bird migration refers to the behavior of birds migrating regularly along many fixed routes between their breeding grounds and wintering grounds.

Birds that have this kind of migration behavior are called migratory birds. The migration behavior of migratory birds has obvious seasonal rhythms.

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Winter migratory birds spend the winter in the south and fly north to breed in the spring, such as barnacles, mandarin ducks and waxwings. It is estimated that about one-third of the world's bird species are migratory birds, among which migratory birds in the northern hemisphere often fly across the equator to Africa or South America to spend the winter.

Before migratory birds begin to migrate, they store a lot of fat in their bodies.

During migration, migratory birds rely entirely on the fat stored in their bodies to supply energy. The longer the migration distance, the more fat the migratory birds consume.

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According to research reports, the golden plover's flight distance during the winter is about 1,034 kilometers. When the golden plover arrives at the wintering grounds, its weight is 14% lighter than when it set out on the winter migration.

The wintering flight distance of the Black-tailed Godwit is about 2,021 kilometers, and the body weight consumption during winter migration is as high as 28%.

Migratory birds that fly across deserts and oceans cannot obtain food during their migration, so they store more fat in their bodies before their winter migration.

Although migratory birds fly long distances, most individuals will reach their destination.

If endangered migratory birds are artificially bred in captivity for several generations, their offspring will often lose their ability to migrate.

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For example, artificially bred whooping cranes. As whooping cranes are extremely endangered, people have to carry out artificial breeding. After the success of artificial breeding, whooping cranes lost the habit of migrating with the seasons. In order to restore the migratory habits of these artificially bred whooping cranes, researchers dressed up as whooping cranes, flew gliders, and led them to fly along the migration routes of their ancestors.

There are 565 species of migratory birds in China, of which 136 are protected by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Fauna and Flora, and 225 are first- or second-class protected animals in China.

Among these migratory birds are endangered species such as the bustard, red-crowned crane and black-necked crane, all of which are "key protected objects" of China's wild animals.

Wintering migratory birds often gather in one wintering ground. For example, the white cranes almost all winter in Poyang Lake in Jiangxi Province of my country.

If wintering migratory birds are ruthlessly hunted, the loss will be very heavy. Therefore, winter is one of the key periods for the protection of wildlife, especially migratory birds.

As winter approaches, animals are trying their best to survive. In any case, winter is a tough test for many animals. Therefore, in winter, we should pay more attention to protecting wild animals so that they can welcome the new year of spring.

This article is from the magazine "Knowledge is Power", with the original title "Animals' Weird Ways to Survive the Winter", written by Jiang Zhigang, with some deletions and modifications. Please indicate the source when reprinting original works.