How Much Do Outdoor Animals Suffer in the Cold?

Meaning your everyday outdoor creatures, squirrels, rabbits, deer, birds etc. (As opposed to polar bear, musk oxen, penguins etc.)

They’re obviously built to survive the cold. But people can also survive a lot more cold than they’d be comfortable with. So the question is: when it gets really cold - or even just run-of-the-mill winter cold, are these animals suffering-but-healthy, or are they indifferent to the cold?

I do not think any animal is indifferent to the cold. Haven’t you ever notice that birds fluff up their feathers when cold? They are born with downy feathers. A cat out in the cold will fluff up its fur.

OK, but maybe after it fluffs up its feather/fur it’s fine.

Since a number of animals die of hypothermia each winter, I suspect that somewhere between death and ‘if I just fluff up a bit I feel fine’, there’s ‘damn, I’m miserable and cold.’ Just a guess.

This reminds me of a possibly-relevant factoid: I’ve seen it mentioned, regarding those occasional stories about feral children, that they seem to be insensitive to cold. It was mentioned regarding Victor of Aveyron and I think I’ve seen it mentioned in other stories of feral children.

And feral children don’t even have feather or much fur to fluff!

That makes sense for animals that have fur and feathers.But what about cows, horses, etc?
How do they regulate body temperature in extremes that other mammals can’t survive?

I doubt that they would suffer much if the degree of cold is typical – such a distraction would be selected out because it would affect their ability to hunt, mate etc.
Humans suffer in the cold largely because it’s an environment that is relatively new to us, that we only ever managed to conquer by utilizing clothing.

Unusually cold weather though may well be as unpleasant to fauna as it is to us.


Of course all this touches on a philosophical / neurological question of how we can ever know whether a given species (or even individual) feels pain, and to what degree. One conjecture that has a lot of supporters is that positive and negative sensations make sense where an organism needs to make a case-by-case decision, and a knee-jerk response won’t cut it.

So if a cockroach always dashes into a nearby shadow, that suggests it is a knee-jerk response and the cockroach feels nothing. OTOH, if it will sometimes remain out in the light, because, say, there’s a particularly tempting piece of food, that implies it finds light unpleasant, but can tolerate it.

Smaller animals are able to make use of the subnivean climate between the ground and the snowpack as insulation against the colder temperatures.

At least that is the information that wormed its way into my head during the hours that my daughter spends watching Wildkratts.

Our horses prefer being outdoors until it gets down below zero (Fahrenheit). I fed them this morning. It was 15 F outside, warmer in the barn, but I had to call them to come in for their grain.

Animals lack much of the cognitive ability to experience cold (and much else) as fully self conscious humans are able to. They lack our ability to see alternatives or believe that there could be an alternative. This is probably a benefit to them as anxiety and ability to see that it could be otherwise is something that increases human discomfort. Much reaction to distress is learned ( think of children playing in the cold until they are blue, where adults would worry about consequences).

Remember the adage that only humans foresee their own death.

What surprises me is that you though can regulate temperature well with activity, you often see animals keeping still in the cold. If you are active staying warm can be simply a matter of keeping moving, burning lots of calories, but the moment you stop cold sets in quickly.

Backcountry skiing I can be stripped down to an undershirt, with my pants sides zipped fully open and staying just below a sweat; stop for a minute to eat something and I have to put on the puff jacket, toque and gloves. Winter animals must be able to keep their internal furnaces burning constantly.

My german shorthaired pointers used to worry me in very cold weather as I live in California. They were in heaven in the snow and icy water as well.

All I know is that our bird feeder is busier in winter than even the height of summer, and finches the size and shape of baseballs are quite amusing.

The squirrels don’t seem to mind the snow, either.

My California-raised Great Dane took to the snow like an idiot seal. He has to stand outside eating as much of it as he can before he comes back in.

Kids playing out in the cold all day is largely because they are having fun, and adults too can be oblivious to the cold if they can remember how to do that.

Meanwhile children don’t seem to need to learn consequences to feel distress; they certainly can feel pain long before any understanding of what it means.

(putting aside for a moment the issue I mentioned before of how do we know another organism feels pain, as opposed to just acting a certain way?)

Yes, animals adapted to colder climates really can just burn fat reserves to keep their internal body temperatures up. Humans can’t do this, which is why we need to shiver and exercise to keep our temperature up. Lots of other animals can do this more efficiently by just turning up the furnace.

A bit off topic. but this thread reminds me of a quote that I love.

“I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.” - D. H. Lawrence

Horses and cows have fur too, yanno. :dubious:

they might freeze their hoofies to the quick.

I’m not a farmer, but don’t herd and flock animals such as cows and sheep typically huddle closely together for warmth.

Driving past some farms into work this morning, the horses seemed to be having a grand time jumping around in the snow despite the -10F temperatures. Doing little hops and then big serpentine looking jumps culminating in big back kicks.

Of course, horses and cows are much more massive than humans so I’d expect them to keep a warmer core temperature in the cold. We have a greater surface area to mass ratio so we lose heat faster.

Smaller mammals have the sense to seek or create shelter in the winter: hollows in trees, burrows, digging into the show to make temporary burrows, lodging under snow-covered evergreen shrubs, getting into garages and attics, etc so they certainly seem to know enough to prefer warmer comfort to cold exposure. How much they suffer I have no idea but they sure seem to know the difference.