Living in the Snow
By: VS Grenier
Do you live in a place where the weather gets cold in the wintertime? On the other hand, maybe you live in a place that does not get very cold at all. Did you know there are people and animals living in some of the coldest places in the world?
The people called the Inuit (IH-nyu-ut) live in places such as Northern Canada, Russia, Greenland, and Alaska. Animals the Inuit people might see living in the same places include the harp seal and polar bears.
The Inuit people live in a different type of house than you or I do. Their houses are made of ice. You might know the name of this icehouse. Can you guess? It’s called an igloo. The Inuit people use blocks of ice to make the dome-shaped house. You might think sleeping in a house made of ice sounds really cold. Actually, it’s pretty warm. The dome-shaped house helps keep the heat made by your body inside the house. Pretty cool to be your own personal heater.
Newborn harp seals have fluffy white fur to help keep them warm. After the seal gets older the fluffy fur becomes a silvery coat layered with fat. The pup seal gains body fat to help keep it warm on the ice and in the cold sea water. The harp seal spends most of its time in the sea swimming. Moving around and catching fish helps to keep the seal’s body warm, too. Have you ever run around outside on a cold day? Did you feel warm after you stopped? That’s because your body burned some energy which became the warmth you felt.
A polar bear’s dense fur coat keeps him warm on the ice and snow, kind of like the coat your mom makes you wear when you go outside on a cold day. Polar bears live in a den and cuddle up with each other to keep warm when they sleep.
Now, emperor penguins don’t live near the Inuit people, but they do live in another really cold part of the world called Antarctica. Like polar bears and harp seals, emperor penguins have special ways to stay warm. The fluffy feathers they are born with become stiff waterproof feathers to keep the emperor penguins warm when they go swimming in the icy waters. Another way emperor penguins stay warm is to cuddle up together. All the body heat of their pals warms up the penguins in the center of the huddle. Then the emperor penguins in the middle move to the outside to let the next group of penguins use the clever heating system.
Can you think of things you do to stay warm? One thing you can do is rub your hands together really fast. The more you rub them the warmer they will begin to feel. Wearing warm clothes like a hat, coat, and gloves on a cold day will keep you warm. Another thing you can do to stay warm is drink hot cocoa with marshmallows. Yummy!