Sunday 21 April 2013

why animals hibernate


Following on from Sam’s blog entry on badgers, I began to wonder why animals hibernate, I have my theories but through reading other blog entries, I have found some of my theories to be untrue.

Animals hibernate to conserve energy over winter when food in scarce, they have the ability to reduce their body temperature to almost match the temperature outside, for days, weeks and even months at a time to conserve their energy. They also conserve their energy by not moving and also by slowing their metabolisms. The animals breathing and heart beat also slows down, all these elements combined help animals survive the cold months during winter.

Many people, me included, think that hibernation would be restful, but it is not. Some animals are so exhausted after their hibernation; they need to sleep more once they stop hibernating to recover.

Hibernation is very different to sleeping, when sleeping the animals can wake easily and move around during sleep. During hibernation animals appear lifeless and often take a long time to be woken and even longer to begin moving.

To prepare for hibernation, animals eat more food to store as fat to live on throughout their hibernation. Interestingly animals do not lose any muscle during hibernation and wake just as strong as they did before they went to sleep.

Some animals don’t hibernate straight through winter, but stores food with them and wake occasionally to eat and then goes back to hibernation.

There are two different types of hibernators:

Warm blooded


 
And cold blooded


 Amy Spencer

Bibliography
http://library.thinkquest.org/TQ0312800/hibernate.htm

1 comment:

  1. Fascinating. It would be interesting to know how they actually survive when they reduce their body temperatures, metabolism, heart beat and breathing? And also how animals do not lose muscle during hibernation and how/why some animals wake throughout hibernation to eat?

    Lauren.

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