The Americas Explained: Snowshoe Hares, Masters of the Frozen Forest in the Yukon
Tom Hanks takes us inside the life and death drama of snowshoe hares and the Canada lynx.
From the southernmost tip of Chile to the frigid northern boundaries of Canada and Alaska, The Americas, narrated by Tom Hanks, takes viewers on an epic 10-part exploration of Earth’s largest supercontinent.
The Americas' special two-part premiere kicked off Sunday with “The Frozen North,” where the landscape is marked by destructive avalanches, massive overland migrations, stunning northern lights, and the fleet-footed daring escapes of snowshoe hares.
RELATED: Want To Get in Touch with Nature? NBC’s The Americas Partnerships Are Here To Help
The Americas Episode 1: Snowshoe hares stay on their toes in the frozen north
In the Yukon forests where the snowshoe hare dwells, winter temperatures can reach 30 degrees below freezing or more. The days get so short and there’s so little food that most critters leave for warmer climates or hole up until the weather improves. It’s even tough for filmmakers trying to capture what little activity remains.
“Electronics don’t like the cold. The lenses don’t like going from warm to cold, warm to cold,” The Americas' Executive Producer Mike Gunton told NBC Insider. “There’s lots of what might seem like trivial challenges, but they’re frustrating. Of course, it’s always the moment when something’s happening that a battery dies. There are intrinsic challenges in that sort of world.”
RELATED: The Americas Explained: The Secret Lives of the 9-Brained Giant Pacific Octopus
The snowshoe hare, however, is well equipped to dominate the frozen forest. They are small and light, with comparatively large, webbed feet. Those feet act like snowshoes, giving them their name and keeping them above the snowline. In the spring and summer months, snowshoe hares are reddish brown in color, but when the days shorten, their fur changes to a stark white, helping them blend in against the snow.
During more fertile times of year, snowshoe hares eat mostly grasses and flowers, but in the winter, they survive on twigs and bark, scraping protein and nutrients from the barren winter landscape. If they survive, they breed in the spring and summer. Reproduction is rapid with a one-month gestation, and females can have three or four litters each year. Young hares mature by the time they’re a year old, though many of them don’t live that long. Snowshoe hares are an important prey species to a number of predators, including the Canada lynx.
The Canada lynx, a snowshoe hare’s worst nightmare, as depicted in The Americas
Clocking in at 20 pounds on average, the Canada lynx is barely larger than a robust housecat, but much fiercer, with a short tail and furry padded feet. They patrol the landscapes of Alaska, Canada, and the northern United States. In the southern parts of that range, they eat a varied diet of prey animals, but in the northernmost parts of their range, they dine almost exclusively on snowshoe hares.
A northern Canada lynx is well-adapted for hunting hares, catching and consuming one every two to three days. It’s a drama which plays out over and over again in the frozen north, and The Americas lets us see it up close.
RELATED: The Americas Explores Zombie Fish at the Prince William Sound Salmon Migration
“One of the reasons we liked that story is it’s a kind of a lions vs wildebeests story, in miniature, in the backwoods of the Americas. That’s one of our subthemes, there’s lots happening that you wouldn’t perhaps realize, stuff that’s happening in your backyard, stuff that’s happening beneath the trees,” Gunton said. “There’s an amazing wealth of stories in nature that don’t always have to be bears and pumas and that sort of creature.”
Using its large ears, the snowshoe hare listens carefully for the crunch of footsteps, so the lynx must be stealthy. Before it can get close enough, the hare is on the move and the lynx follows, scampering over the snow on fleet feet.
Both are agile, but the snowshoe hare has an advantage in its smaller size and oversized feet. It waits, hiding against the white snow until it finds the perfect moment to flee. The lynx is persistent, but the hare is fast, with a top speed of 30 miles per hour on open snow. Usually, the Canada lynx is successful in its hunt, but the hare escapes. This time.
Where can you watch The Americas?
New episodes of The Americas debut Sundays at 8:00 p.m. ET on NBC and stream next day on Peacock.
