Eli5: Why do small animals like squirrels not lose appendages to frostbite when temperatures reach below freezing, and they walk around on ice and snow all day?
In: Biology
Studied vertebrate physiology for a year in college, the basics boiled down to this. Small furred animals have enough insulation with their fur, fat built up ready to hibernate as well as just store energy and protect them in the winter time, and better circulation due to their small size. A squirrels heart beats 300 times per minute in the winter, that’s roughly triple a normal persons. Rodents such as squirrels, rabbits, raccoons, etc. eat extra food and build up fat during the winter, whether you can visually tell or not is irrelevant. You try to tell people’s body shapes from how and what they were outside right now and you’d probably be wrong.
TLDR: Faster heart beats for smaller animals mean more heat is pushed around the body keeping them warm. They also have fur that thickens in the winter usually and eat extra food to have some fat that helps insulate.
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