With the frightful winter weather on full blasts, we humans put on our wool socks, parkas, knit hats, and insulated boots to bear the cold. But what about the wildlife? How do they cope with winter? Won't they be miserable during the cold season?
If you've ever walked a dog when temperatures are frigidly low, you'll notice how man's best friend shivers. This is why there is a boom in the pet clothing industry. On the other hand, chipmunks and other wildlife don't have the option of fashionable booties or winter coats.
According to Bridget Baker, a Clinical Veterinarian and Deputy Director of WATER Lab at Wayne State University says. That just like people and pets, wildlife can succumb to hypothermia and frostbite.
How Winter Affects Wildlife
In the northern parts of the United States, unfurred tails of possums are the typical casualty of cold exposure. During cold snaps, there have been records of iguanas falling from trees and manatee deaths due to cold stress.
Avoiding severely cold weather is vital in preserving life, limbs, and the ability to reproduce. These key biological imperatives equate to the assurance that wildlife feels cold and tries to avoid sufficient damage from the extreme weather.
Animals have their own experiences of unpleasant biting mixed with pins-and-needles, like humans, that urge animals to find a source of warmth or suffer the irrevocable consequences.
According to a study published in the Journal of Experimental Biology, thermoregulation and metabolism responses are virtually the same for most vertebrates.
One challenge for warm-blooded animals (endotherms) during winter is maintaining internal body temperatures. At the same time, the temperature-sensing-thresholds of endotherms depends on their physiology.
Ectothermic frogs, for example, sense cold at a lower temperature than a mouse. Recent research published in Cell Reports suggests that hibernating animals, such as the thirteen-lined ground squirrel, do not sense the cold until lower temperatures than warm-blooded animals that do not hibernate.
This means that wildlife is aware that it is cold. However, they perceive the cold at varying temperatures.
Adapting to the Cold
Many endotherms that reside in cold-climates exhibit torpor---is a survival tactic that involves lower breathing rate, body temperatures, heart rate, and metabolic rates in animals. Unlike hibernating, torpor is an involuntary state of self-preservation.
When an animal is exhibiting torpor, they appear to be sleeping. These animals can alternate between internal body temperature regulation and allowing environmental influence, which is why scientists consider these animals as heterotherms.
During winter, the flexibility of heterothems gives them the advantage of a lower body temperature. Some species can regulate temperatures below 32 degrees Fahrenheit, which is not compatible with other physiological functions.
As a result, a lower metabolic rate, thus energy and food demand is low.
Torpor also befits smaller wildlife such as songbirds, rodents, and bats. These animals naturally lose heat faster due to smaller surface areas. To maintain ideal body temperatures, they must expend more energy compared to larger animals. This is truer for birds who are maintaining high average body temperatures.
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