What animals hibernate what are hibernation, causes and types of hibernation

The process of hibernation (just like summer) is an interesting and unusual physiological process that has long occupied the minds of observers.

What is hibernation, or hibernation

Typically, animals are hibernated, whose habitat are a moderate climate, characterized by a fairly warm summer and very cold winter. At the same time, most of them survive only thanks to hibernation after all, in the cold season it is almost impossible to minute food.

Winter hibernation (or, scientifically, gibbernation) is distinguished by a slowdown in all metabolic processes in the animal, including even the frequency of breathing and heartbeat. To do this, the animal begins to prepare for this process long before the onset of winter time after all, fat is required to accumulate enough fat to be able to survive in this difficult period.

The process of gibbernation itself differs from other similar processes numbness and anabiosis a significant slowdown in all life cycles and a stronger level of sleep.

The most famous animals that fall into winter hibernation are, of course, bears, but this species of animals is not the only one who falls asleep for the winter. The same reaction is distinguished by turtles, groundhogs, snakes and frogs, and some types of insects, which are also an example of a particular variant of gibernation.

Reasons for falling into hibernation

Speaking is quite simple that hibernation is an easy way for an animal to save energy.

Typically, hibernation is a manifestation of seasonal behavior, but in some cases it is directly connected with some moments of weathering. For example, some tropical species of animals hibernate to be able to survive the heat.

However, the temperature factor is not the only moment. So, animals can “fall asleep” with a lack of food, as the Australian Echidna does after strong fires.

Another reason that was revealed recently is a protective factor, because at the time of hibernation the animal does not create noise, does not move, which makes it difficult for predators to search for such small mammals.

Physiology of gibernation

The hibernation process can continue for several days and several months everything will depend on the type of animal and other external conditions. Moreover, it is interesting that during the gibbernation there are periods during which the body temperature rises to standard parameters. Typically, at this time, the animal’s body receives nutrients due to those reserves that were accumulated in the preparatory period.

The same bear, which is a bright representative of such animals, the degree of stopping of metabolic processes is an order of magnitude less than other small mammals rodents or the same insects. Therefore, many scientists hibernation of the bear do not belong to the real biological process of gibernation. The bears do not sufficiently decrease the temperature indicator (by only six degrees from 37 to 31), and it is quickly restored if necessary.

And the same earthen proteins are able to reduce their temperature to negative indicators (up to2 degrees). If we talk about a giant shark an animal, which, as it was thought before, falls to the tributary horizons of the ocean in winter, then modern studies have refuted this theory. It turned out that the shark was quite active at this time in search of food.

Classification of various types of hibernation

In terms of depth level, it is customary to distinguish between several types of this process:

As a rule, before the process of falling into the hibernation, animals try to accumulate sufficient supply of nutrients through enhanced nutrition. So, with seasonal hibernation, animals gain almost half of the mass of their body and hide in prepared shelters with the necessary microclimate.

By regularity, it is customary to distinguish between the following types of hibernation:

Many of the large mammals (the same bears and badgers) fall into some kind of gibbernation winter sleep however, with a lower level of decrease in all physiological processes.

Some species of these animals are able to conduct even some of the pregnancy in this condition and give birth immediately after the cessation of the Hibernation process. Throughout the hibernation, the periods of real hibernation are able to change and periods of raising temperature and return of all familiar processes.

Among mammals that hibernate can be called rodents, lemurov, hedgehogs, marsupials.

It used to be believed that some species of birds (swallows, for example) are also capable of hibernation but this is a mistake the birds are not able to hibernate, with the exception of only one species American whitehorned goats.

In the absence of parents into a state similar to hibernation (numbness and decrease in temperature), the chicks of small hummingbirds and swifts flow.

Before the beginning of the millennium, it was believed that primates were not capable of hibernation but in 2004 it was proved that small dwarf lemur spends in a state of hibernation for almost the whole year he sleeps in hollows for seven months. And this despite the fact that the temperature on the habitat of the lemurs Madagascar may exceed 30 degrees.