How do stagnant, bark-nibbling porcupines survive frigid Alaska winters? A biologist spent more than six years studying them and came away with several insights:
While running through Far North Bicentennial Park in Anchorage, biologist Jessy Coltrane spotted a porcupine in a birch tree. On her runs on days following, she saw it again and again, in good weather and bad. Over time, she knew which Alaska creature she wanted to study.
In designing her study, Coltrane mused about the challenges of an exposed life during an Alaska winter: Bitter air temperatures would probably require a porcupine to take in more calories, she thought. This seemed puzzling when a porcupine’s major food was to be the inner bark of white spruce trees and the tree’s bitter needles, rich with toxins that discourage most every other animal from chewing them.To begin her study, she searched for detailed studies of far-north porcupines. She found none.
• Despite eating low-protein foods in winter, porcupines did not lose lean tissue. They instead lost 30% of their fat reserves.
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