eli5: What triggers the swap between winter and summer coats in animals?

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What makes an animal swap between summer and winter coats?

Is it timed by a biological clock?
Is it temperature?
Or is it just diet maybe?

Take an arctic fox for example. It sheds its winter coat going into summer, if you move that fox to a warmer climate will the foxes fur stay perpetually in “summer mode”.

In: Biology

4 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Or maybe its a combination of the above and other factors

Or maybe the mechanism varies species by species rather than try to follow some rule of hand

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