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

	Badgers		Hedgehogs
	Bats		Nighthawks
	Chipmunks		Poor-Wills
	Dormouse		Prairie Dogs
	Fat-tailed lemurs		Raccoon
	Ground squirrels		Skunks
	Hamsters		Swifts
	Marmots, Groundhogs, Woodchucks		And bears [depending on who you talk to]

 

And cold blooded

	Bees
	Earthworms
	Frogs and toads
	Lizards
	Mud Turtles
	Snails
	Snakes

 Amy Spencer

Bibliography

http://www.howitworksdaily.com/environment/why-do-animals-hibernate/

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