My watch claimed it was morning, but as I walked towards my snowmobile it was still dark.
The snow crunched loudly beneath my boots, as it does when the thermometer dips below -30℃, and when I drew breath, I could feel the crispness of the frigid air as it entered my lungs. I swung my arms in a vain attempt to warm my hands.
Like little clockwork toys, a small flock of Rock Ptarmigan waddled furiously away from us, seemingly unconcerned with the cold.
“How on earth do these birds survive in these temperatures?” I asked my companions, who seemed in no mood to consider avian comfort levels. I was on Southampton Island at the north end of Hudson Bay, embarking on my first extended snowmobile trip to assist on a caribou study. It was 1984.
Animals can choose one of three main evolutionary options to adapt to cold and snow. A good one, especially if you’re a bird, is to simply avoid winter altogether and migrate south for the winter. Another option, if you’re a mammal such as a bear, is to hibernate when temperatures drop.
But it’s the third option we’re concerned with here: you could evolve to survive—and even thrive—in winter. Canada’s far north is home to many creatures which take this final route, but so is Jasper National Park—particularly on the mountaintops which, for their winter snow and ice and seeming inhospitable environs, are like mini-Arctics.
The fancy Latin word for loving the cold and snow is chionophilia. This being Canada, we can think of many animals that tolerate cold and snow to some degree‚ the white-tailed deer being a good example. White-tails do live in cold regions, but they also live as far south as South America. Some animals however, have adapted to cold and snow so well that they can live nowhere else.
The lynx is one such animal. There are four species of Lynx in the world: the bobcat (Lynx rufus) in southern Canada and the USA; the Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx); the Iberian lynx (Lynx pardinus) in Spain; and the Canada lynx (Lynx canadensis), or what we just call ‘lynx.’ Iberian lynx and bobcat mostly live in snow-free areas, and some Eurasian lynx live in areas with mild winters.
The Canada lynx, however, can only live in cold areas with extensive snow cover. Lynx have dealt with deep snow through the evolution of very large paws, which they use to stay on top of the snow to hunt their favourite prey, snowshoe hares (themselves another chionophile). Lynx have dealt with the cold by evolving fur with amazing thermal qualities. A good time see lynx in Jasper is in March or April when roads become preferred travel routes due to melting snow in the forests.
Caribou are another JNP animal that can only live where there is cold and snow—they are the most cold-adapted member of the deer family. Like lynx, caribou have large feet and incredibly warm fur. They use those big hooves to stay on top of the snow (and to walk on wet boggy ground in the summer). The hairs in a caribou’s coat are actually hollow and are among the warmest furs in the world. The Inuit have long been aware of this and traditionally use caribou skins for winter clothing and for bedding in their igloos.
Some Jasper birds are also chionophiles. The Great Grey Owl is found only in cold, snowy regions. It specializes in catching small rodents below the snow. Watch for their ‘plunge holes’ in the snow at the side of the road where they have dropped from the sky to snatch a vole.
Of course owls don’t really need big feet since they don’t have to walk on snow, but they have other adaptations, such as thick downy feathers for warmth and amazing hearing to detect rodents beneath the snow. Look for Great Grey Owls roosting in trees at the edge of rodent-rich meadows.
Which brings us back to Ptarmigan. Like the Rock Ptarmigan I encountered all those years ago in the arctic, Jasper’s White-tailed Ptarmigans live only in cold snowy areas, but in our case that means on the tops of mountains, rather than the arctic tundra.
They, too, have highly insulative feathers and because they are primarily ground-dwellers, their feet have evolved to resemble tiny, Ptarmigan-sized snowshoes. Like their arctic brethren, they are completely at home in snow and extreme cold, making them perfectly suited to the bone-chilling temperatures experienced across Alberta this past week.
