View from the North 40: It's a winter brain thing

Nature and the creatures it mothers think in seasons not days and dates.

This weekend we transition to a whole new calendar year whilst, sadly, we remain stuck in the same old winter that we’ve been trudging through since early November which, by the way, made the recent solstice marking the first day of winter a mere ironic moment in Nature’s cold, white season.

After about a month of winter weather, though, I start thinking it’s not smart to live here, then last week I read about the black-capped chickadees. You know the cute little black, white and gray birds of the mountains, even the island mountain areas like the Bear Paws and the Little Rockies.

These chickadees are also a favorite in nature-themed Christmas cards because of their monochromatic black coloring looks striking in snowy images with a festive red berry, ribbon or bow.

More than once through the years, I’ve told the little chickadees they’re cute, but not smart for staying here in winter.

Turns out I’ve been wrong.

They’re smart for having stayed for the winter, which sounds absurdly counter-intuitive.

As the days grow shorter and the temps drop in fall, the chickadees’ brains grow larger in the hippocampus area. Actually grows in size. I read a transcript of a Montana Public Radio podcast by Jen Elison that prompted more research because I was shocked to learn that the black-capped chickadees’ little birdbrains grow 30 percent in the winter.

Thirty percent, the researchers have said. So, yeah, it’s apparently a thing we know now.

The hippocampus region of their brains increase that much just to help them remember where they stashed all their winter food supplies in their 10-mile home-base radius.

Weirdly, this growing and shrinking brain deal is kind of a thing among winter food hoarders because squirrel brains do that, too. Contrary to its popular image, squirrels are smart.

I know, now we should probably re-evaluate all of our derogatory squirrel-related insults like, “He’s so squirrelly,” “She really squirrels away her (money, chocolate, treasures, etc.),” and “You’re squirrel bait, dude.”

Nah, I don’t ever see things like, “She’s so squirrelly she’s going to Harvard after graduation,” becoming a part of the colorful English language palette.

Besides, the brain gain only applies to the different species of tree squirrels because they’ll sleep away a day or two here and there, but the rest of time they’re just hanging out in their cozy nest, munching on their plunder and watching Netflix. Ground squirrel species, aka gophers, marmots and prairie dogs, hibernate, like real hibernation, and just sleep the winter away making it seem like it doesn’t even happen.

So how smart are humans then.

We don’t hibernate and we don’t catch a two to seven day nap to snooze through the deep cold spells, and we can’t even find our vehicles in the parking lot at the grocery store. There we are plowing a cart cattywampus through the snow pushing the key fob button to see if we’re maybe close enough to our car to make it beep.

Is the bigger brain the golden ticket to being smart about winter? I give you the elephant as evidence that this isn’t necessarily true.

Sure, their brains are three to four times bigger than ours, but humans have them beat in the brains-to-body-weight ratio, a study by researchers at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro says. The researchers showed that the ratio of brain to body weight in humans and elephants is about 1:50 for humans and about 1:800 for elephants, so human brains are relatively bigger.

Margaret Osborn writing for Smithsonian Magazine says research shows a significant portion of the elephant brain is used just to run the trunk, a complicated but useful instrument. The downside though, is that they don’t have as much brain power left to be as clever as humans.

And yet … they have outsmarted us.

Elephants do not live in wintry places. Unless some stupid human has dragged them to the hinterlands, they live in savannas, grasslands, forests and jungles even some deserts, swamps and highlands in tropical and subtropical areas.

It’s easy to say that they adapted to the area over the eons. It’s mere biology, not a brain thing. Pardon my French, but au contraire.

Elephants and woolly mammoths are descendants of the mighty Gomphotherium, which looks as large and galumphy as the name sounds, and the two offspring, of separate minds, went two separate directions, as offspring have been known to do.

The elephants stayed in the warm climate where they could bask in the sun and never know frostbite. The mammoths grew their hair out long, went on a rock band world tour, ended up in wintry climates and then just weren’t smart enough to get a haircut and head south again.

We all know how this ended, too — they lived where it was wintry and they died off forever where it was wintry — that includes Montana, where Montanans have chosen to live.

The elephants, though, are laughing all the way to the beach. So you tell me who has enough brains to make smart choices.

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I’m not saying winter killed off the woolly mammoth, but I’m not not saying it either at http://www.facebook.com/viewfromthenorth40 .