These include Harry Houdini, Buns, Nibbler, and my favorite, David Hopperfield.Īs a college student, Scott wanted to be a wildlife veterinarian. Scott’s team has given names to some of the hares they keep in captivity. Which do you think survives better-heavier or lighter hares? (Answer at the bottom.) Its weight tells him how healthy it is for that age. The length of the hind foot gives Scott an idea of how old the hare is. Scott measures the health of a hare by the ratio of its weight to the length of its hind foot. More than anything else, though, they catch skunks! It takes real skill to get a skunk out of a trap without getting sprayed! There, Scott expected to find coat-color-changing animals, but guess what? There weren’t any! That’s startling in one of the world’s highest and snowiest regions, but it shows the importance of having scientists to actually look at places instead of just assuming what the world is like.īesides finding hares in their traps, Scott and his team have caught marten, grouse, wood rats, and gray jays. When I first started talking to Scott, he was about to spend a year in Bhutan, at the foot of the Himalaya Mountains. Have you ever wondered why science museums collect and store millions of dead animal specimens? Scott’s work provides the answer: because future scientists might need them one day! Old museum specimens are helping Scott and his team in at least two ways-telling them how early or late coat colors changed in the past, and if the animals genes have changed in the last century or so.
Scott and his team named one of their favorite hare study areas “The Milk Shake.” That’s because it was close to a great milk shake place in the nearby town of Seeley Lake. Can you figure out how many hares that per acre? Enjoy!įor a small animal, hares need a lot of space to live in. They are things that I learned while writing the book, but just didn’t quite make it into the final draft. But now, thanks to Kid Lit Frenzy, for the first time ever I am pleased to give you TEN HAREY FACTS that you won’t find in Hopping Ahead of Climate Change-or any other book. Still, some cool information always gets left on the cutting room floor. Last, I wanted to keep the book as interesting as possible so that you, the readers, wouldn’t start yawning and drooling all over the pages! Another is that not all of what I learned related directly to my main topic. Why? One reason is that longer books cost more money to manufacture. As always, though, when writing the book, I had to leave out 90% of the information I gathered. For this book, I got to interview scientists, read about animals, and go out with Professor Scott Mills to catch snowshoe hares.
I loved doing the research for Hopping Ahead of Climate Change.
Unfortunately, shorter winters are leaving many hares “mismatched.” With less snow, their white fur stands out against the brown forest floor, making them more likely to get eaten by a predator. Every winter, snowshoe hares change their coat color to white. Hopping Ahead of Climate Change: Snowshoe Hares, Science, and Survival takes a look at the impact our warming planet is having on snowshoe hares. Hopping Ahead of Climate Change: Snowshoe Hares, Science, and Survival
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