Unit 1. How Do Animals Spend the Winter？.doc

How Do Animals Spend in the Winter? The weather gets colder, days get shorter and leaves turn color and fall off the trees. Soon, winter is here. Snow covers the ground. People live in warm houses and wear heavy coats outside. Our food comes from the grocery store. But what about animals? Migrate Animals do many different, amazing things to get through the winter. Some of them migrate. This means they travel to other places where the weather is warmer or they can find food. Many birds migrate in the fall. Because the trip can be dangerous, some travel in large flocks. For example, geese fly in noisy, V-shaped groups. Other kinds of birds fly alone. How do they know when it is time to leave for the winter? Scientists are still studying this. Many see migration as part of a yearly cycle of changes a bird goes through. The cycle is controlled by changes in the amount of daylight and the weather. Birds can fly very long distances. For example, the Arctic tern nests close to the North Pole in the summer. In autumn, it flys south all the way to Antarctica. Each spring it returns north again. Most migrating birds travel shorter distances. But how do they find their way to the same place each year? Birds seem to navigate like sailors once did, using the sun, moon and stars for direction. They also seem to have a compass in their brain for using the Earths magnetic field. Other animals migrate, too. There are a few mammals, like some bats, caribou and elk, and whales that travel in search of food each winter. Many fish migrate. They may swim south, or move into deeper, warmer water. Insects also migrate. Some butterflies and moths fly very long distances. For example, Monarch butterflies spend the summer in Canada and the Northern U.S. They migrate as far south as Mexico for the winter. Most migrating insects go much shorter distances. Many, like termites and Japanese beetles, move downward into the soil. Earthworms also move down, some as far as six feet below the surface.