Post #14734

Winter in Australia: How do local weirdos survive the cold? Spring has arrived! The days are getting longer, the sun is warming up, and the rooks are returning from distant lands. Even people experience a long-forgotten desire to turn their faces to the sun and breathe in the humid air deeply. But in Australia everything is not like ours, including the change of seasons. Therefore, while we are enjoying the coming spring, local animals are preparing for winter in full force. Although the Australian winter is much shorter and milder than ours, it is still merciless to the slow-witted fools who dare to ignore it. That's why there were no such fools left a long time ago. Every Australian animal somehow adapts to a temperature drop of 10/20/30 degrees. But not everyone succeeds. Small birds have it worst. Birds by nature have a high body temperature, and local species have also learned to dissipate this heat so as not to accidentally overheat in the summer. But in winter this ability works against them. Little birds have to eat three times and spend a lot of energy heating their bodies, which is not so easy. Beautiful fairywrens, for example, lose up to 50% of their population each winter. It’s good that they restore it quickly enough. Small mammals also suffer a lot. In the southern, coldest regions, possums and marsupial mice can fall into real hibernation lasting several weeks. Right now, on the day the article is published, they are gorging themselves on fat and looking for secluded places where they can pass out. Northern species have a simpler life; every night they fall into torpor, a more gentle version of hibernation - their metabolism slows down, and their body temperature drops significantly. And when the sun peeks over the horizon, the animals shake off the night's torpor and come out to warm up. And while every warm-blooded little thing suffers, large animals feel quite comfortable. Red kangaroos, for example, jump merrily across snow-covered fields and tolerate even near-zero temperatures quite tolerably. Due to their large body volume and thick undercoat, they cool down much more slowly and simply do not have time to freeze overnight. But the animals still change their habits: now they do not lazily lie in the field, but huddle under trees and bushes, protecting themselves from precipitation and cold winds. And the strangest inhabitants of the inverted continent, the platypuses, don’t even care about the changing seasons. Their wool has such excellent heat-insulating properties that it is not inferior even to the fur of animals in the Northern Hemisphere. Therefore, the strange animal not only does not hibernate, it calmly hunts in icy water and even crawls through the snow - to spite everyone! Some animals meet winter not with fear and indifference, but with joy. Quokkas (strange tiny kangaroos), for example, are delighted by the winter rains, which bring respite from the eternal heat, but also transform the dry w