H-A-M for Survival

Learn:

What exactly DO animals eat in the winter? Grass and leaves are hard to come by, insects are hiding or dead or gone, and many prey animals stay beneath the snow.

Each animal in a seasonal area - like Wisconsin - has its own unique adaptations for surviving the winter. These can loosely be categorized into HAM: Hibernate, Activate, and Migrate.

Hibernators (Reptiles, amphibians, some insects, some mammals, some fish, some invertebrates) slow their body systems down and rest for the winter. They do not eat because eating would require

A) finding food

B) digesting food

Both of these activities take a lot of energy, and that’s what the hibernator is trying to conserve.

Active Animals (Some mammals, some birds) keep moving throughout the winter to find food and to stay warm. They bulk up on high-energy foods like nuts, seeds, and berries. Others strip bark off of young trees or switch to eating evergreen needles. Carnivores keep on doing what they do best - hunting. Eating animals that have fallen prey to winter sometimes becomes a priority.

Migrators (Some insects, some mammals, some birds) travel to places where they can find the food that they need to survive.

Read:

An excellent book discovery I made for this post was Something’s Fishy by Jean Gourounas. The illustrations are simple, the concept is clear, and there’s the best surprise at the end. (My favorite is the penguin’s facial expressions…) This book is a perfect quick and quirky read-aloud (or YouTube view) for a cold day. Connect it with the concept of what animals ACTUALLY do in winter, or have a silly discussion of what they COULD be doing!

Do:

On a hike outdoors, search for evidence of animal foods. Maybe it’s pinecones stripped of their scales and scattered on the ground, maybe it’s holes left behind by squirrels searching for their caches, maybe it’s bits of dried crabapples under the tree in your yard. Or maybe it’s all of those seed husks at your birdfeeder! Animals are feeding all around us - pause and notice these signs when you get a chance!