The Mystery of the Pregnant Mink

I've been wondering how wild animals handle pregnancy. My impression of life in the wild is that animals have to spend pretty much every waking moment foraging or hunting for food, and if they could gain weight, they would - but you hardly ever see a fat wild animal. I read an article about minks once, called "Living Hungry." A mink has to hunt continually, just to find enough food to survive. Their metabolisms are so high that if they don't make a kill and eat about once an hour, they die of starvation. They're an extreme example, but really life must be hard for any animal that doesn't have access to a grocery store. So when they get pregnant, how do they manage to put on the extra pounds?

Maybe they just spend more time eating, and less time keeping a watchful eye out for predators or defending their territories - they're forced to take additional risks in order to get enough calories. Or maybe they migrate to better hunting grounds or follow seasonal food, like whales traveling down the coast. (Though that raises the question of, if the hunting is better in those zones, why don't they just live there year-round?) It must be especially difficult for animals in temperate zones that mate in the fall and give birth in the springtime - because that means they have to gain all that weight in winter, the time of year when pickings are slimmest.

Or maybe in the wild, being pregnant is a normal state of affairs and most animals conceive every year, but then most of the babies die or get eaten. So it's a rare animal that spends a season non-pregnant or non-nursing, and without those extra demands on resources, that animal actually would be able to get fat. Maybe there is more "wiggle" room built into the system than it looks like - perhaps most animals don't have to spend all their time foraging just to survive, they eat until they're full and then have time to wander around doing other things (unless they're pregnant, in which case they just spend more time eating and less time wandering around). Still sounds like it's tough to be a mink.

I wonder about these things because, although I am not a mink, I have a high metabolism, and I'm not sure I can eat enough to gain the weight I'm supposed to. I try to snack extra, but then I usually don't have room for dinner, so I don't think I am managing to eat more than I did before I got pregnant. I think I am supposed to be gaining a pound a week from now on.