How the Lemming Got its Coat

The Ice Ages were, without doubt, the most dramatic natural climatic changes on Earth in the last few million years. The last one was particularly severe, with vast ice sheets covering much of northern Europe and northern North America. This, naturally enough, forced many species of animals in the Northern Hemisphere to move south. Even those well-suited to the cold, such as reindeer, musk oxen, and woolly mammoths, would have had to avoid the barren ice sheets, even if they were happy in the broad tundra belt to the south.

In Europe, in particular, there is only so far south you can go before hitting the coastline. This meant that many animals were forced into small areas, some of which may still have been marginal habitat for them, to avoid extinction. These areas are called "refugia", and their small size and isolation were a driver for evolutionary change. Sometimes populations were split apart for so long that they became separate species and, for example, we can date many species of northern birds to this time, even though, for them, the Mediterranean would not have been an issue. 

Digging in a Winter Wonderland

Humans have a somewhat ambivalent attitude to snow, greeting it either with joy and wonder or with concern and frustration, in large part depending on how old you happen to be. It decorates Christmas cards, covers the countryside in pristine white, and provides plentiful opportunities for play. On the other hand, it makes travel difficult, and may even interrupt deliveries of food, making our lives awkward. (Plus, if you're in a city, it may not stay white for very long).

If heavy snow makes it difficult for us to get around and obtain sustenance, the same obviously goes for animals that live in the relevant parts of the world. Different species have different strategies for how to cope with its arrival. Some hibernate, while others avoid the problem by migrating somewhere else for the winter, but there are, of course, a number of species that simply have to put up with it. Those that live particularly far north may even have to do so for over half the year, and the difficulty of doing this is probably at least part of the reason why relatively few species do.