Their hearts may stop beating during hibernation, but it will start beating again when They often develop ice crystals in their bodies, but their vital organs don’t freeze because of a type of sugar, glycerol, in their body. Some, unable to get below the freeze line in the soil, freeze solid over the winter! Grey Tree Frogs often freeze, like little “frogsicles”, in our Vermont winters. Some species, those that are not good diggers or those that don’t head for water, like Spring Peepers, Wood Frogs and Grey Tree Frogs, hibernate in deep crevices below rocks, logs and leaf litter. These frogs absorb oxygen through their skin while hibernating. Many aquatic frogs hibernate under water, under the ice, just above the mud in ponds and lakes. Some Vermont amphibians, like the American toad, are good diggers and can get below the frost line to spend the winter in what’s called their “hibernaculum”. Imagine if our bodies did that in the winter! But we’re a ‘warm-blooded’ animal we can produce enough heat to keep our bodies far warmer than our environment. Frogs are sometimes called ‘cold-blooded’ animals, which means, unlike us mammals, their body temperature quickly follows the temperature of their environment. All of Vermont’s frogs hibernate during our long, cold winters. To survive our cold Vermont winters, some animals migrate and others, like frogs, hibernate.
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