People often escape the cold by spending more time at home and covering their beds with blankets or wearing warm clothes. But what about other members of the animal kingdom? Portal popsci.com speak about how some animals cope with winter frost.
To cope with the cold of winter, some reptiles and all amphibians undergo bruising, essentially a less intense form of hibernation. Bears and other hibernating mammals spend a lot of time sleeping. And during bruising, reptiles and amphibians go through a period of hibernation, but there are periodic bursts of activity.
If we compare with humans, animals in the throes of colic wake up from time to time to go to the bathroom and drink some water. During hibernation, this is impossible – a sleeping bear spends the entire winter without moving while its body is fueled by fat reserves.
Amphibians and reptiles need to be periodically active to drink – otherwise they risk becoming dehydrated. They often choose less cold days for this; If you're lucky, the cold-blooded animals might even experience nice sunny weather.
But there are also exceptions. For example, tree frogs living in cold regions of the United States encounter frost more often than other species, and they deal with this problem differently. They don't bruise – they freeze like ice. For months, these frogs burrow under fallen leaves and wait to thaw without breathing, without a pulse or even brain activity. But as soon as the weather gets warmer, they come back to life. This strategy allows them to be active from early spring, because forest soil thaws and warms faster than ice-covered lakes where other frogs have to bury themselves in mud.
Although many birds escape the cold by temporarily migrating to warmer climates, not all birds do this. Some, like cardinals, chickadees and blue jays, remained put. To withstand frost, they must carefully care for their fur. Some birds grow new feathers specifically for winter, while others shake out old feathers so they better insulate pockets of warm air. Grooming also sometimes allows them to protect their feathers from water – to do this, birds use natural oils secreted by glands in the tail area.
Finally, birds often find good places where they can wait out the frost, snuggling close to their relatives. Hollies and some other plants also continue to bear fruit – with their help, wintering birds are saved from starvation. Well, feeders in the caretakers' yards also help.
Under water, fighting the cold can take many forms. For example, blue crabs in the Chesapeake Bay spend most of the winter buried in mud. Their hibernation is not considered complete hibernation because unlike some mammals, crabs do not undergo any physiological changes that reduce their body temperature. And oysters, for example, actively eat their sugar reserves in the summer to burn them off in the winter – just as reptiles and amphibians do during reproduction.
