Nature uses many mechanisms to protect plants and animals from the harmful effects of external factors and dangers. Speed, strength, sharp teeth, poison - these are all active means of survival. Disguise, symbiosis and suspended animation are passive methods that help to survive. The article will tell about hibernation of bears in winter, answer questions about how clubfoot prepare for winter, when bears hibernate, when they wake up.
What is hibernation
Hibernation is a time of slowing down of life processes and chemical metabolism in the body of warm-blooded animals. The main characteristics of this condition: a decrease of several degrees in body temperature, breathing becomes rare, slowing of the heartbeat, inhibition of physiological processes. Hibernation is used by animals for self-preservation during periods when it is difficult to find food, when severe cold sets in. The condition can last from several days to many months.
What animals can hibernate
From childhood, everyone knows that in winter, the toed bear is hibernated, during which it sucks its paw, and only wakes up in the spring. And the answer to the question of when the bears hibernate is known even to children - in late autumn.
In fact, bears do not fall into real hibernation, which in essence is the suspended animation of the body. They only plunge into a shallow sleep, easily awakening if disturbed. During this sleep, the body temperature of the bears drops to 31 ° C, while the normal temperature of the beast is approximately 38 ° C. For comparison: the body temperature of the American gopher, which in the active state is 38 ° C, during winter hibernation drops to zero! Still, Toptygin's body works in an economy mode, the number of heart beats decreases to ten per minute, and metabolic processes slow down several times.
But in a dream, the bear turns on its other side, sometimes it raises its head. However, in nature there are many animals that experience adverse conditions, leaving in a state of deep sleep, resembling death: hedgehogs, Madagascar dwarf lemur, ground squirrels, jerboas, bats.
Like a clumsy bear, preparing for hibernation. Fat accumulation
In order to successfully winter, you need to solve two issues:
- accumulate energy reserves;
- to prepare for wintering a room - a den.
Energy reserves are fat. To accumulate it, the bear has been actively searching for food all summer. He loves sweet forest berries, especially raspberries and wild strawberries, honey of wild bees, but is not picky about food and eats roots, ants, fish, small mammals. The undersurface layer of fat in bears closer to the cold reaches a thickness of 7-9 cm. Females gain weight up to 150 kg and more, males gain up to 300 kg, with 1/3 of the total weight being fat.
A few days before leaving for the winter, they stop eating and actively empty their intestines. After all, when the bears hibernate, they do not eat for six months, do not drink water and do not defecate.
Preparing a den for wintering
The second thing is to prepare a shelter - warm enough to hide in it from the frost, and safe so as not to become easy prey for the enemy.
The bear selects the place for the future lair very carefully. Depending on the species, it can be a depression between tree roots, a cave or a rock niche, an abandoned anthill, and a tree hollow. Sometimes bears dig dugouts, reinforcing the walls with branches, very rarely build horse lairs - a structure made of branches on the ground that resembles a large bird's nest.
The bottom of the shelter is covered with fir branches, peat, moss, dry leaves, hay, and when the bears hibernate, they are warm and comfortable in their bed.
The size of the den is not much larger than the body of the beast. Toptygin always leaves a hole through which air enters his shelter. Surprisingly, the snow, completely falling asleep to the den, never falls asleep in the "window", so well the bear knows how to choose a place for him.
What month does the bear go to sleep
Scientists have long been closely studying such a natural phenomenon as hibernation. Much attention is paid to physiological processes, such as metabolism and changes in metabolic reactions. Scientists are also interested in when bears hibernate. In Siberia and in Europe, this happens at different times. The following factors are relevant:
- sex, age and physiological condition of the animal;
- yield of bear feed;
- natural area;
- weather.
Pregnant females and mothers with cubs were the first to leave for wintering in early November. Spring bears and males go to bed at the end of November, and in the southern regions they can reach the middle of December.
In years with a particularly large harvest of nuts and acorns, these dates shift by a few more weeks closer to winter.
If for some reason the bear did not manage to get fat for the winter or build a dwelling, then it does not hibernate. Such animals are called connecting rods. They are very dangerous because they behave aggressively and maliciously.
Now the reader knows at what time the bear goes into hibernation and how he prepares for it. It remains to clarify that Toptygin leaves the den in the south at the end of February, in mid-latitudes - in March, in the north - in April. Thus, wintering can last from 2.5 to 6 months.