Winter may seem like a season of stillness, but science tells us a different story.
Even in the quiet winter months, the natural world buzzes with activity. Insect migration patterns shift, animal survival tactics kick in, and tiny engineering feats unfold as snowflakes form in the sky.
These five Deep Look videos bring that hidden winter world to life.
When forests grow quiet in winter, pine cones emerge as the reproductive engines of conifers, with male and female cones playing distinct roles.
The male cones release clouds of pollen in spring, but the female cones do the real winter magic: they hold the seeds.
Their armor-like scales act like tiny gates, opening just wide enough to catch pollen spread by the wind, then sealing shut for months as the seeds develop inside.
When conditions are just right, often during crisp, dry weather, the cones flex open again and let the seeds whirl out into the cold air, find a home in the ground and grow into the next generation of trees. Conifers survived ice ages, fires, and everything in between with this ancient system, as old as 300 million years.
Every year, male reindeer grow an entirely new set of antlers, essentially full bones that sprout from their heads in a process fueled by testosterone.
In summer, these antlers are wrapped in velvet, a dense skin rich in blood vessels that nourish the fast-growing bone. Come fall, the velvet sheds, revealing the smooth, polished antlers, the reindeer use to spar with rivals and impress potential mates.
But after this courtship season ends and hormone levels drop, the antlers simply fall off. Squirrels, mice and other winter scavengers gnaw on the cast-off antlers for calcium.
Within weeks, the reindeer begin growing the next set. They may not fly, but they’re winter’s most impressive bone-builders.
Each snowflake starts as a tiny water-vapor speck freezing into an icy hexagon.
As it tumbles through clouds, temperature and humidity shape its branches, making each one’s journey and pattern unique.
But in a lab, physicist Ken Libbrecht can actually make identical snowflakes by precisely controlling the conditions.
Nature may be unpredictable, but science proves it can be repeatable, at least under the right conditions.
In the oak woodlands of the West, acorn woodpeckers spend the colder months guarding something very valuable: thousands of acorns meticulously stored in their communal granaries.
These birds drill hole after hole into trees, sometimes over generations, to create a kind of pantry wall where they can tap acorns in like a wooden peg.
Acorn woodpeckers live in family groups and spend winter tending their stash and defending it from thieves. Come spring, they’ll shift to insects and oak flowers, but in winter, acorns fuel their lively, noisy, and highly social world.
Did you know that a cluster of these insects is known as a “loveliness of ladybugs”?
Just when the cold sets in and their favorite foods, like aphids, disappear, ladybugs join one of the most surprising winter gatherings in nature.
These usually solitary insects take to the air, riding wind currents toward mountain slopes where their ancestors have clustered for years. They’re guided by pheromone trails that act like tiny chemical breadcrumbs.
When they arrive, they pile together in rust-colored heaps, sometimes thousands strong. This communal hibernation is their best chance of surviving winter, and since most only live a year, it’s also their one shot at reproducing in spring.
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