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Animals Adjust Lifestyle Patterns at the Onset of Colder Weather
During winter, our bodies try to adjust to the longer hours of darkness. We feel the urge to get more sleep at night or to take more naps during the day. We often tend to eat warm, homecooked meals, watch comforting movies, and spend more time inside. While we don’t exactly experience hibernation, our bodies do try to adjust accordingly to the changing of the season. So, too, does our wildlife in NEPA.
The two main factors that affect our animals and plants during winter are the intense weather patterns and lack of food. Most of Pennsylvania’s animals hibernate, torpor, brumate, or diapause, which are all different forms of ways that animals sleep, nest, or conserve their energy. Pennsylvania’s plants and trees go dormant or continue to seek out food/water.
Hibernation
Hibernation occurs when an animal’s body temperature drops, their heartbeat slows down, and they survive off burning stored fat gained during the summer. While many of us were taught that most Pennsylvania animals hibernate during winter, (wrongly our black bears), not all animals do or can. Groundhogs, woodlands mice, and some of our bats (Big Brown bat, Little Brown bat, Tricolored Bat, Eastern Small-Footed Bat, Indiana Bat, and Northern Long-Eared Bat) engage in hibernation.
Torpor
Torpor is characterized by a sleeping stage, where animals take part in a less intense version of hibernation that can last for a few hours each day to a couple of weeks at a time. Black bears are a torpor animal, where they may rest for a long period of time, but may move from their dens and search for food or simply go to the bathroom. Racoons, skunks, and opossums enter the inactive state of torpor, to conserve their energy, while also needing to remain active and leave their dens for more food.
Brumation
While this is very similar to both hibernation and torpor, brumation is used by amphibians and reptiles. Black Rat snakes and Eastern Rattlesnakes find burrows or even wood piles to brumate while the weather temperatures drop.
Dispause
Animals such as invertebrates, bees and wasps, take part in diapause. Queen bees and wasps and other surviving female bees and wasps will enter diapause, by seeking out a warm place to hide out in logs, leaf piles, and even homes. Penn State Extension states, “the queen bees or wasps are fertilized during their diapause, so that when spring comes around, she can regrow her nest.”
Be mindful of animals adjusting to the winter months and avoid their carefully-chosen habitats.
When you find yourself taking a nature walk this winter, it’s always a good reminder to stay on marked trails, for both your safety and the rest of our nesting critters. Resting animals will generally avoid settling down near high traffic areas like established trails. Paths may be covered by snow, so be sure to look for trail markers even in familiar surroundings.
Pennsylvania Game Commission Northeast Region biologist Kevin Wenner said, “Wildlife have unique adaptations as their means of coping with the winter months. Protecting and enhancing native wildlife habitats by joining habitat organizations is the best thing residents can do to help wildlife through the winter months.”
Featured image (top) courtesy of North Branch Land Trust.
