Alaska porcupines are almost twice as large as Lower 48 porcupines, and they survive the winter by burning body fat and moving very little.
While running through Bicentennial Park in Anchorage, biologist Jessy Coltrane spotted a porcupine in a birch tree. On her runs on days following, she saw it again and again, in good weather and bad. Over time, she knew which Alaska creature she wanted to study.
In designing her study, Coltrane mused about the challenges of an exposed life during an Alaska winter: Bitter air temperatures would probably require a porcupine to take in more calories, she thought. This seemed puzzling when a porcupine’s major food was to be the inner bark of white spruce trees and the tree’s bitter needles, rich with toxins that discourage most every other animal from chewing them.
• 50% of a porcupine’s weight in fall was in the form of fat. “That’s ridiculously fat,” Coltrane said. “Like a polar bear or a seal.”]
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