Winter Reading: How Animals Survive the Winter
Read the text. Then answer the questions on the next page.
Winter is a hard time for animals. The days are short and cold, the ground is frozen, and there are no fresh leaves, berries or insects to eat. Animals have three main ways to get through the winter.
Some animals sleep. Bears, hedgehogs and bats eat a lot in autumn and build up fat. Then they find a safe place, like a den or a pile of leaves, and fall into a deep sleep called hibernation. Their hearts beat slowly and they hardly breathe. They live on their fat until spring.
Some animals travel. Swallows and storks cannot find insects in the cold, so in autumn they fly thousands of kilometers to warm places in Africa. This journey is called migration. In spring they come back to the same places to build their nests.
Other animals stay and adapt. Foxes and deer grow a thick winter coat. Squirrels hide nuts in autumn and dig them up when they are hungry. Many birds stay too, and they look for seeds wherever they can find them. That is why a bird feeder in the garden can help them a lot in the coldest weeks.
