As temperatures begin to drop, the woolly bear does its biological magic—it freezes to become a solid hairy cylinder. When temperatures rise and snow melts the following June, the woolly bear thaws and emerges to begin feeding, basking in the sun’s heat, and storing energy. The cycle repeats when the woolly bear freezes again in the fall. Ecologists who have looked at the growth rates of the woolly bear estimate that it lives in this freeze-thaw cycle for at least seven years, and possibly as many as fifteen.
