Hibernation is a way of making it through the winter consuming a minimum of fat and reserves until food gets easier to find; the animal's heart beat and respiration slow dramatically although some species wake up to urinate and nibble at reserves.
Ladybirds hide under leaves,snails block their shells with saliva and frogs and certain fish cover themselves with grease hiding under the mud. Snakes sleep in tunnels a metre underground.
Not all small animals hibernate - squirrels stay in their nests during cold weather but come out to top up reserves in warm periods and the yellow necked mouse digs tunnels under the snow safe from predators.
Marmots of course hibernate en famille in a big chamber, with a toilet room nearby.
Chamois and ibex descend to the tree line, as do snow hares, but as with all the species they are right on the edge of survival in winter and many do not survive.
You can often find fox tracks (like a small dog's print with elongated claws) as they scurry around desperately searching for food. During my first winter in Chamonix I was alone high on the Dome du Gouter at 4000m being knocked flat by 100mph gusts and dodging large frozen pieces of broken-off sastrugi that were whipping past at high speed when I was astonished to see a little circle of orange fur dancing about in the spindrift near me on the edge of a crevasse - it was a pair of foxes fighting to to stay on the mountain as they were continually picked up and thrown by the wind. They had come up to scavenge where the wind had blasted clear the spot where they burn rubbish at the Aiguille du Gouter hut.
The snow hare's fur changes colour from pure white through patchy brown to brown. In some parts of Britain they never get past the patchy stage.
In the winter, in the Alps, snow hares tend to move down to the tree-line. They are smaller than a field hare, but have proportionally larger hind paws to support them on the snow, digging to feed on grasses, mosses and lichens. They survive in an incredibly hostile climate, making their forms in the windscoops behind rocks which you can sometimes find by observing their meandering tracks (from a telesiege is ideal. In very cold conditions, when disturbed, they hop away at almost walking pace just ahead of you, wasting no energy on unnecessary spurts, although in warmer weather they sprint away like a normal hare. Like much of the mountain wildlife they exist right on the limits of survival.
There is often a narrow tunnel dug into the side of the windscoop, which is not used except for shelter in case of attacks by eagles or foxes. Soon the males will start to behave strangely, perching on rocks to observe each other and trying to manoeuvre closer to the females before this develops into full-scale boxing matches. The females line their forms with their own fur to keep the young warm.
