Wildlife is feeling the cold, too

As much of Canada and the United States experienced a blast of Arctic temperatures, wildlife species been feeling the cold, too. “Sometimes when I am sitting in my warm house on a cold night I feel sorry for the animals stuck outside in the cold,” said TWS member Roland Kays, a research associate professor of forestry and environmental resources at North Carolina State University. “But evolution has equipped them with the fur, fat and foresight to survive this kind of thing.” But some species struggle more in the cold than others, Kays said. Species like the Virginia opossum (Didelphis virginiana) and the nine-banded armadillo (Dasypus novemcinctus) wandered to North America from warmer climes and never adapted well to cold weather. Some others struggle in heavy snow. “It’s an environmental factor that some animals are good at dealing with and some animals aren’t,” Kays said.

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