Don’t Be Afraid! Here are 10 Gorgeous Winter Animals that You Should Love

There are 10 gorgeous winter animals that you should love. When we’re talking about winter animals, you must have imagined polar bears or other scary animals that will seem to hunt you down once they see you, right? But, don’t be afraid! Here are 10 gorgeous winter animals that you should love.

They are actually harmless if we don’t bother them. And once you can watch them, they will steal your heart away!

Winter animals, just like snow, are usually white. Even though they have brown or gray color in the other seasons, they will always turn white in the winter. It’s really useful, though. They can camouflage themselves to escape the predators. But, there is another reason to it. White color usually absorbs heat better than any color. This is why winter animals usually white-colored, so they can absorb any heat that they get.

Amazing how nature works itself. They don’t even need our help and find their own way to survive wilds.

1. Arctic Hare

It’s so easy to misunderstand between hare and rabbit just by looking at the pictures. They’re so similar! But, if you look closely and directly, you can see the obvious difference between rabbit and hare. Hare usually is larger than usual rabbit. The other difference is hare can change its color from brown or gray in the summer to white in winter.

The arctic hare has different kind of anatomy from usual hare. The ears are shorter and thicker. Since they already adapted from their habitat, their fur has gone white. How are they eating in the winter? Usually, they will collect the food in the summer and bury their food for winter supplies. Smart, huh?

2. Arctic Fox

Have you ever seen fox? Well, I’ve never seen one directly, but I saw a lot of fox’s pictures. Usually, they have this pointy rather long, not so much as rabbit, though, ear. However, arctic fox have short muzzle and rounded ears due to restrict the heat loss from their body.

As animals live in Arctic, he shared the uniqueness of arctic animals. You must know that fox is the same family as dog and wolf. The unique thing about this shiny white animal is they live in solitary, instead among of their packs. And they are a monogamous animal. They are loyal to their mates. Cute!

3. Harp Seal

You might wonder how one, who loves fishes, hunts down the underwater animal around all the ice. Well, the seal can. Not only that they are excellent swimmers that can catch many fishes, they also have blubber. Blubber is the thick fat that wrapped their body. So, they can still be warm eventhough under the ice water. And if they’re too lazy to swim in the extreme cold weather, they can just catch about anything on the ground. Like invertebrates, krill, or crustaceans.

Harp seals are very social animals. They usually live in one big colony. However, the seal mothers are great. They can distinguish their pups only by their scents! What a nose!

4. Snowshoe Hare

Hares as cute as rabbits, of course because they are in the same family. If you meet them in the wild, you might need to learn how to build bonds with wild rabbits.

Snowshoe hare is one of the animal who changes its color during winter. While entire body color is changing, the tip of its ears remain black. You can also see the feet is larger than the usual rabbit. It’s because they need it to walk on the snow.

5. Musk-oxen

Belong to family Bovidae, Musk oxen are close relation of mountain goat, chamois, and serow. It looks more than cow, but apparently the same family as a goat and sheep. Shocking! Their horn looks similar with mountain goat, though.

They are come from the southern Barren Grounds in Canada and weigh just the same as cow. If you look carefully, you might see that they have similar characteristic with the ancient beasts, American Bison. Yes, the roamed through North America when there were giant lions and woolly mammoths. Wow!

6. Siberian Tigers

There is a reason that they are called Siberian Tigers, because they mostly circumscribed to two small areas of Russia. However, since there are thin supplies of foods, they have to travel quite far to find food. Poor animals!

Just like any other animals, their fur has been adapted to the harsh condition of winter. While their upper body remain yellow or reddish with black patterns, the chest, belly, inner limbs and the area around the neck are white.

Anywhere in the world, population of tigers are sinking, but this kind is remaining stable. It’s not many of them left, but hopefully, the remaining of them will last forever.

7. Snow Leopard

This gorgeous animal live in the mountains of Central Asia. Due to adaptation to the extreme cold weather, they are insulated by thick hair. Their feet are wide and cover with fur, really useful to walk in the snow. And do you know, they can jump as far as 50 feet! Their feet are as powerful as that.

To maintain the balance, they have the long tails and sometime they use it to cover their sensitive body parts against the severe mountain chill. I mean, it’s really long and thick tail. There are some said that they are the king of the mountains. No wonder, they’re amazing!

8. Reindeer

Can you hear jingle bells when I talk about reindeer? Yes, they are Santa Claus’ pets that help Santa to carry the flying magical cart that becomes common as Christmas animals. There are two kind of reindeer, though. There are forest (woodland) reindeer and tundra reindeer.

Of course, we’ll be talking about the tundra reindeer. This reindeer migrate between tundra and forest in huge herds, approximately half a million! Social animals, then. Really social. And in the large colony, they can walk as far as 5,000 km. I think walking in the large herds really help to take care each other from predators.

9. King Penguins

Who doesn’t know penguins? And who doesn’t love them? I mean, look at them, they’re very cute and funny, especially the baby penguins! King Penguins have this big flipper besides their body to help them diving underwater. It kinda distracts them when they’re walking, so they will slide on their bellies to avoid their flippers keep slapping their body. Cute!

King penguins’ flippers are distinctively large, helping them dive deep in the icy ocean. On land, they waddle and toboggan across the ice—sliding on their bellies, and propelling themselves with their flippers.

10. Snowy Owl

I think snowy owl really loves cold weather. I mean, they are spending time in the icy Arctic in summer, and spend the time in Canada, Northern U.S. when winter comes. Right? They love being around the snow.

Do you know their male voice and female voice are different to each other? Males usually will go loud and booming “ho ho,” and females rather go whistling, mew, or scream. There are more of winter animals that we can see. But, I think these are top tens of gorgeous winter animals that you should love. Aren’t they cool, and cute at the same time?