Natural Phenomena
Hibernation
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A state of prolonged, extreme metabolic slowdown some animals enter to survive a season when food is scarce and temperatures are low, dramatically reducing heart rate, breathing rate and body temperature to conserve energy for weeks or months at a stretch. True hibernators such as ground squirrels can drop their body temperature to near freezing and their heart rate to only a few beats per minute; bears undergo a related but shallower state, sometimes called denning or carnivore lethargy, in which body temperature falls only a few degrees and the animal can rouse comparatively quickly, a distinction physiologists still debate the right dividing line for. Hibernation is a different strategy from migration, which avoids a harsh season by leaving rather than sleeping through it, though both solve the same underlying problem of surviving a period when an environment cannot support the population that thrives there the rest of the year.
Facts
PeriodicitySeasonal: typically one extended winter bout per year in temperate and polar true hibernators. 1 ScaleOrganismal, an individual physiological state, though common enough across a population to shape the annual food and activity cycle of the whole population. 1 First DescribedAmerican naturalist Peter A. Browne gave the earliest formal scientific definition of hibernation in an 1847 tract, describing it as a natural, temporary, intermediate state between life and death that some animals enter under conditions of extreme heat, cold, drought or oxygen deprivation. The word itself is said to have first appeared in print in 1816, credited to German naturalist Lorenz Oken. 2 Cross-Tradition Connections
Demonstrated By
Alpine, Biomes Marmots and other alpine mammals hibernate through the long, harsh winter above the tree line.
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