2. Would you like to do all the things Squirrel does in winter? Give reasons for your answer.
Answers
Answer:
It might seem like a simple question, but scientists have long wondered exactly how bears, bats, snakes, and many other creatures can wait out the winter without freezing to death.
According to a new study, that may be because hibernating animals don’t feel winter’s chill in the same way that we do.
“If you expose mouse or human neurons to cold, they start to fire ... like crazy,” says senior author Elena Gracheva, a neurophysiologist at Yale University School of Medicine. (Read how hibernating bears keep weirdly warm.)
But when Gracheva and her colleagues exposed hibernators like the 13-lined ground squirrel and the Syrian hamster to low temperatures in the lab, they saw very little activity in their TRPM8 pathway, an area of the central nervous system known to process information about cold.
Of Fire and Ice
In another laboratory experiment, the scientists gave ground squirrels, hamsters, and mice a choice of walking on two platforms—one that was a balmy 86 degrees Fahrenheit and another that varied from 86 degrees down to 32 degrees, the freezing point.
While the hibernating animals showed a preference for the warm platform, they also explored the cold platforms, seemingly unaffected by the changes in temperature
Explanation:
Answer:
yes, because animals like squirrels survive Chicago’s freezing temperatures without so much as a coat? While people typically respond to the cold by staying inside and putting on layers, it turns out squirrels have a similar strategy for dealing with the challenges of winter. They tend to spend more time in the den, and they put on “layers” by fattening up.
Squirrels also prepare for winter by bulking up. Throughout fall, they maximize food consumption and body mass. In winter, when food is hard to come by, these reserves will help the animals survive.