{"id":9955,"date":"2019-01-01T12:02:34","date_gmt":"2019-01-01T18:02:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/?p=9955"},"modified":"2019-06-12T10:18:43","modified_gmt":"2019-06-12T15:18:43","slug":"to-sleep-perchance-to-dream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/bug-of-the-week\/to-sleep-perchance-to-dream\/","title":{"rendered":"And now for Something a Little Different V – To Sleep, Perchance to Dream"},"content":{"rendered":"

New Year\u2019s Greetings, BugFans,<\/p>\n

In the spirit of New Year\u2019s Day entertainment, this is a rerun, an article that the BugLady wrote for the January, 2009\u00a0BogHaunter<\/i>, newsletter of the Friends of the Cedarburg Bog.<\/p>\n

The BugLady, Wisconsin born and bred, is not particularly a winter person (though her camera does prod her to suit up and go outside periodically).\u00a0 Winter is monochromatic and still, and then there are the flash-frozen fingers and feet.\u00a0 It\u2019s a really tough period for wildlife to weather, too, and they emerge from it stressed, hungry, and at their lowest populations of the year.<\/p>\n

Most bird species deal with the season by migrating.\u00a0 Temperature isn\u2019t the issue \u2013 birds, after all, invented down jackets.\u00a0 They migrate because their summer food sources aren\u2019t available in winter, and many of the birds that remain adjust their diet to include more plant material (incidentally, Googling \u201cbirds, hibernation<\/i>\u201d and \u201cbirds, torpor<\/i>\u201d is instructional).\u00a0 Birds that do stay, stay silently; other than the call notes of crows, jays, and chickadees, the soft \u201cyank-yank<\/i>\u201d of nuthatches, and the polyglot utterances of starlings, the winter landscape is a quiet one.\u00a0 Bird song, after all, is designed to advance breeding, a summer pursuit.<\/p>\n

Invertebrates are cold-blooded, and with body temperatures that very nearly match the temperature of the surrounding air or water, their winter options are few.\u00a0 Outside of a handful of insects that migrate, some form of \u201csleep,\u201d with cells protected by \u201cantifreeze\u201d from the damage caused by freezing and thawing, is the only alternative to death.\u00a0 Insect eggs, larvae, pupae, and even adults spend the winter in \u201cdiapause<\/i>,\u201d a state of suspended animation during which development ceases.<\/p>\n

When it comes to mammals, the term \u201chibernation\u201d is applied too loosely.\u00a0 Winter sleep – the \u201cperiod of adaptive winter inactivity<\/i>\u201d – is a continuum.\u00a0 At one end are the very few true hibernators, and at the other end are a group of mammals that may \u201chole up\u201d briefly during really severe stretches of weather but that are otherwise active throughout winter.\u00a0 In the middle are a variety of light and heavy sleepers.\u00a0 Whatever the duration of the nap, its purpose is to minimize the number of calories burned.<\/p>\n

True hibernators put on an impressive layer of fat in late summer and fall, retire to a den, and then lower their metabolism, heart rate, breathing, and body temperature.\u00a0 Hibernators sleep so deeply that they are hard to rouse.\u00a0 Woodchucks are true hibernators whose spring awakening is driven\u00a0not<\/i>\u00a0by a call to forecast our weather but by the imperative to reproduce (the BugLady just read in Wikipedia that yearling woodchucks may be called \u201cchucklings<\/i>\u201d).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Jumping mice (Zapus<\/i>\u00a0sp<\/i>.), 13-lined ground squirrels and some species of bats are also true hibernators. The respiration of a 13-lined ground squirrel drops from about 150 breaths per minute to a single breath every five minutes, and its heartbeat goes from 350 beats per minute to five.\u00a0 The debate continues about bears, whose body temperature drops relatively little and whose sleep is fitful, but who, for over half a year, may not eat, drink or eliminate.\u00a0 \u201cTorpor<\/i>,\u201d a short (sometimes just overnight) drop in temperature and metabolic rate in order to conserve body heat, energy and fat reserves, might be a more accurate term.<\/p>\n

\u201cDeep sleepers<\/i>\u201d achieve torpor for a longer part of the winter.\u00a0 They may be roused easily because their body temperature doesn\u2019t drop very much or because they don\u2019t put on a thick layer of fat and so must get up periodically to eat.\u00a0 Chipmunks are classic heavy sleepers.\u00a0 The BugLady\u2019s chipmunks probably enter the winter with 25 pounds of birdseed stashed below-decks, and they may start their winter sleep in a nest of shredded grass piled on top of a mound of seeds.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Much of the food a chipmunk collects is cached in its underground tunnel system, which includes a room that serves as nest chamber, store room and bedroom, and, often, additional store rooms and a separate room for a latrine.\u00a0 Because chipmunks are not well insulated, they must wake for a meal every few days.\u00a0 By the end of winter, their grassy nest may be on the chamber\u2019s floor, and if the cold lingers and they run out of food, they will emerge to forage while there\u2019s still snow on the ground.<\/p>\n

Light sleepers disappear for part of the winter but leave their tracks across the landscape during mild winter days and nights (many light sleepers enjoy the benefits of our bird feeding activities and of the warm motors of cars) (the BugLady\u2019s mechanic loves her \u2013 she lets him keep all the mice he finds, free).\u00a0 Skunks often hibernate in communal dens during the worst of winter \u2013 in some cases, up to a dozen females may cohabit with a single male, while other males may stay active and solitary all winter.\u00a0 Raccoons and possums also den up during deep winter (pity the poor opossum, a southern mammal that is a relatively recent and ill-adapted arrival to God\u2019s country, whose thin ear tips freeze and crack off during especially brutal winters).\u00a0 The diet of all three of these omnivores includes a higher percent of small rodents in cold weather.<\/p>\n

[metaslider id=9959]<\/p>\n

Squirrels trade their tree-top summer nests for leaf-lined winter lairs in hollow trees.\u00a0 The nuts they store during the fall are fair game for any foraging animal, and the vast majority of nuts are found, but squirrels don\u2019t bother to recover acorns that their noses tell them have rotted.\u00a0 Squirrels are well adapted for short sleeps in severe weather.\u00a0 Curled up with that bushy tail acting like a blanket, they can sit out a few days of harsh weather.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Deer (whose drab, winter coats are made up of hollow hairs that trap body heat), mice, voles, and cottontails stay active, as do muskrats, which live below the ice.\u00a0 And what of foxes, coyotes, weasels, shrews, and other carnivores?\u00a0 Most are active throughout the winter because they aren\u2019t adapted for sleep, and there is still food available for them.\u00a0 Watch for their tracks in the snow, too.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The BugLady read a neat story in the snow at Riveredge Nature Center the other day.\u00a0 She found a snow-covered, sawed tree trunk lying across a thickety area.\u00a0 There was a row of tracks along the length of the log where a coyote took the path of least resistance.<\/p>\n

The BugLady<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Winter is monochromatic and still, and then there are the flash-frozen fingers and feet. It\u2019s a really tough period for wildlife to weather, too, and they emerge from it stressed, hungry, and at their lowest populations of the year. Animals deal with this harsh season in a variety of ways, such as migrating, hibernating, and diapause.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18146,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","uwm_wg_additional_authors":[]},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bug-of-the-week"],"yoast_head":"\nField Station<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/bug-of-the-week\/to-sleep-perchance-to-dream\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"And now for Something a Little Different V - To Sleep, Perchance to Dream\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Winter is monochromatic and still, and then there are the flash-frozen fingers and feet. 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