Leave it to college to change, yet again, something I was certain I thought I knew. I mean sure my political ideology has drastically changed from being conservative (aka under the influence of my very religious family) to a more liberal perspective. Somewhere out there one of my family members reading this is puzzled thinking to themselves, what you mean you’re not prolife?!? And sure on some things my experience at the university has expanded my thoughts on some of the issues my public education failed me in, BUT common, I never expected to learn something like this so late in the game. My whole life, since I can remember, I was taught that bears hibernate. This might not be shocking or irrelevant to you reading this but it shattered my world. My jaw dropped and I had to fight the urge to let out a high pitch gasp when my Mammology professor broke the news. I know I wasn’t the only one who was effected by hmm maybe the imagery of a sleepy bear cartoon, or the term hibernation loosely being used to mean sleep, because I saw a bunch of confused and “say wuuut?” faces in class.
Cold winter often activates this adaptive to climate state in mammals. Let’s face it no one likes to be out and about in the cold, we usually have to layer clothes on and psychologically convince ourselves to get out from under the warm blankets to get a move on in a cold day. So it’s no surprise that most mammals are the same. Winter usually yields less available food, especially for herbivores, and the energy cost for locating a meal in a cold day becomes way high. Solving this problem essentially leads to two solutions…1.) Dying or 2.) Adapting to the harsh winter by lowering your metabolism, respiration, and heart rate. The animal’s body temperature drops significantly low, often times matching the winter temperature outside. Large mammals, yes that includes bears, don’t go through true hibernation. The largest mammal that hibernates is the marmot which only weighs about 5kg.
So what do bears do in the winter?
If they are NOT hibernating then what the heck are these furry large suckers doing? They undergo a torpor state of sleep. During this “faux hibernation” their core body temperature doesn’t reach as low as what a true hibernator would reach but it does drop. Even though they do sleep for long periods of time they are still active on occasions, such as if they need to urinate or eat. True hibernators seem as if they are dead, they sleep entirely with no waking up. Since larger mammals have more surface area and volume it would take way too much energy, energy they don’t have, to warm their bodies up once out of the hibernating state. Which brings to mind an image of a snoring bear in a cage with a wander sneaking in to do lord knows what….yeah, BAD IDEA. Unless you are looking for a bear mauling then go ahead and make your way into a bear den while they sleep and pray that their torpor sleep isn’t somehow affected by your presence.
Learn something new every day, to bad this isn’t really new just something I can now be scientifically correct (SC) about. I sincerely wish I had the ability to stimulate my hippocampus to remember the bastards responsible for leading me to believe that bears effing hibernate.
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