Author Topic: Hibernation and Estivation (Read 65 times)

K A I N · « **on:** December 08, 2005, 06:24:37 PM »

Hibernation is a time when animals ‘sleep’ through cold weather. This sleep is not like human sleep where loud noises can wake you up. With true hibernation, the animal can be moved around or touched and not know it. [Don’t you do this, though. Some animals only go into a torpor or temporary sleep time and can wake up quickly. Like BEARS.] We are going to use the word 'sleep' sometimes but hibernation is different from regular sleep. With normal sleep, the animal moves a little, has an active brain, and can wake up very quickly. With true hibernation, the animal appears dead. There is no movement and it takes a long time for it to wake up enough to even walk around.
We will show you how animals get ready to sleep the winter away, what it is like, and who does it.
GETTING READY: During the fall, hibernating animals eat more food than usual. Their bodies will live off their body fat as they ‘sleep’ through winter. The animal will use up the body fat it stores and not lose any muscle. This causes the animal to come out of hibernation thinner but still as strong as it was in the fall.
The animals get their winter nests, dens and burrows ready. Different kinds of animals hibernate in different kinds of safe spots. When they go into hibernation and their bodies slow down, enemies can get them easier. They try to pick the safest place to spend the winter away from these enemies.
WHAT IT IS AND WHO DOES IT: Hibernation is the way that animals adapt to the climate and land around them. Animals must be able to live through extreme cold…. or die. Animals hibernate—or deep sleep—to escape that cold. They also do this because it is really hard to find food during the winter.
We don’t think about body energy too often. Our bodies are like machines that need power to work right. Food gives animals the energy they need to walk, run, hunt for food, and lots of other things. Hibernating animals store food as body fat during the end of summer and during fall. This body fat runs their bodies all winter. This would be hard to do if they stayed awake, moved around a lot, or ran around because those things would use up the body fat before winter was over. A hibernating animal’s body saves energy by doing a couple of cool things.
When an animal begins to hibernate, its body temperature drops very low so that it almost matches the temperature outside. Your temperature is normally about 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. If you were a hibernator and it was 30 degrees outside, your body temperature would drop from 98.6 down to about 30-40 degrees. THAT’S cold!
The animal’s heartbeat and breathing slow down, too. This is when that stored fat that the animal packed on in the fall comes in handy. This stored fat lasts longer because their bodies are slowed down so much that they don’t need much energy. This is how the animal makes it through the whole winter on the fat it has stored in its body. This is why it's important for animals to get enough food stored in the fall. If there is a shortage of food at that time, the animal might not live until spring when it can find its food again.
Some of these hibernators also store food in their caves and burrows. The ones that do this do not sleep straight through the winter. They wake up once in awhile, walk around a little, and eat before they go back to sleep. Some warm-blooded hibernators are:
   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]

Cold-blooded hibernators begin hibernation when the cold weather causes their body temperatures to drop. Cold-blooded animals do not have a body temperature like humans do. Our temperature stays about 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit all the time. Cold-blooded animal temperatures stay the same as the air temperature around them. If it is 50 degrees outside, the lizard is around 50 degrees. If it is 110 outside, then they are about 110, too. Since we already said that hibernators adapt to their environments, you can see why these animals would try to escape extreme cold AND heat by hibernating. Hibernation is sleeping through cold and estivation is sleeping through heat. Cold-blooded hibernators will wake up when the air outside warms or cools enough for them to be comfortable. Some cold-blooded hibernators are:
   Bees
   Earthworms
   Frogs and toads
   Lizards
   Mud Turtles
   Snails
   Snakes

+ More info on how each animal hibernates...l
http://library.thinkquest.org/TQ0312800/hibernate.htm

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Hibernation Induction Trigger (Hibernation Inducement Trigger or HIT) is a substance found in the blood of hibernating animals. If blood is taken from a hibernating squirrel in the winter and injected into another squirrel in the spring, the normally active squirrel goes into hibernation. HIT can be found in the blood of hibernating bears.

Researchers were able to prolong the life of an isolated pig's heart with HIT. This may have potentially important implications for organ transplant, as it could allow organs to survive for up to 18 or more hours, outside of the human body. This would be a great improvement from the current 6 hours.

Also NASA became interested in HIT with an eye to long-lasting space travel.

Chemically, HIT is an opioid-like substance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hibernation_induction_trigger