Chickadees, Winter's Hard-Core Survivalists

Description

Did you know chickadees are more than just cute little birds? They have some awesome winter survival adaptations that would make most human survivalists quite jealous.

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Tags: Kenton Whitman,ReWild University,Human Rewilding,personal rewilding,mindfulness,how to,bushcraft,survival,wilderness survival skills,how to survive in the woods,chickadees

Video Transcription

think we humans are good survivalists we may have some great skills but other animals have some amazing adaptations that make them into real experts stay tuned to the end of this video for a perception challenge here in Wisconsin USA it's the middle of April and it's still winter

the chickadee is out here in the wind and snow sharing its world with other birds and mammals small cute and friendly they are among the first that will come to a new feeder and if you sit still long enough with a handful of sunflower seeds a chickadee may very well be the first one to land upon your fingers but this tiny bird has long mystified scientists because of its small size it has a lot of surface area relative to its body mass translation it should get cold very quickly yet chickadees overwinter here in Wisconsin and even up into Canada and Alaska during the day they're active keeping warm with a hot blasting metabolism but what about at night when Alaskan temperatures dip down to negative 40 Fahrenheit Celsius and lower a human being would be dead in a couple of hours without proper clothing gear and shelter so how does this tiny golf ball of flesh and feather manage to survive the night folk wisdom had a ready answer the story goes the chickadees gather in groups at night huddling together in a hollow log or other shelter their mutual heat is shared keeping them alive through the night but scientists studying the birds haven't found any evidence for the huddle theory they have however managed to uncover a few of the chickadees real secrets first comes a hearty appetite the chickadee forages for seeds and insect eggs and needs to eat almost constantly during the day they'll even take to an animal carcass where they especially relish any fat that they can find all this eating helps them to gain weight during the day wildlife ecologist Margaret Clark Brittingham from the University of Wisconsin found that chickadees weighed in the morning had virtually no body fat yet later that afternoon they were bulging with fat what she observed was the equivalent of a 180 pound person waking up in the morning eating like crazy in gaining 18 pounds by late afternoon then comes night and all that extra fat is burned to keep the chickadee alive but even with those fat reserves the chickadee would be frozen stiff by morning so they have to find a well-insulated place to sleep biologist Susan sharbo from the University of Alaska Fairbanks fitted small radio bands onto chickadees and followed them to their nightly roosts all the birds that she studied flew to birch trees and nestled in small holes nestled in it's nighttime home the chickadee delivers its final surprise it drops its body temperature going into a controlled hypothermia the normal temperature of 108 degrees Fahrenheit slips down 10 or 15 degrees they enter a sort of torpor reducing their metabolism and shivering to keep warm this combination of excess body fat a cozy hiding place and their ability to reduce their temperature makes the chickadee an expert survivalist well I wish I could do that but what about those spindly little feet why don't they freeze when a chickadee perches on metal or ice the answer is in another special adaptation it's called rate a mera belay a thin interweaving of arteries and veins the arteries carry heart warmed blood right down to the feet right into those little toes keeping them toasty in any weather in the veins borrow heat from the arteries so that when blood gets to the chickadees heart it's already pre warmed so next time you see a cute chickadee perched on a branch realize that it's much more than just a little bird it's one of nature's toughest survivalists okay here's that perception challenge can you find the deer before i zoom in you

did you see them both here's another one find the dear you

in the comments let me know any experiences you've had with chickadees and of course let me know if you saw the deer before I zoomed up