{"id":435,"date":"2019-02-01T15:47:00","date_gmt":"2019-02-01T20:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/forsyth\/?p=435"},"modified":"2025-11-24T10:22:24","modified_gmt":"2025-11-24T15:22:24","slug":"hibernation-is-one-strategy-for-coping-with-winter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/forsyth\/hibernation-is-one-strategy-for-coping-with-winter\/","title":{"rendered":"Hibernation is one strategy for coping with winter<\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"A
Some animals and insects use hibernation or daily torpor as a strategy to survive cold temperatures and reduced food resources of winter. This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA-NC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Heather N. Kolich, ANR Agent, UGA Extension Forsyth County<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Winter officially started with the winter solstice in late December, but the lead-up to the season arguably begins in June. That\u2019s when the summer solstice marks the day of the year with the longest span of daylight. After the summer solstice, the time between sunrise and sunset gets a little shorter each day, until we hit the winter solstice, which is the shortest day of the year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those short days seem to sap my energy away, and cold winter nights make me want to huddle up under blanket with a cup of hot chocolate. These seasonal changes also affect plants and wildlife.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Winding down for winter<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shortening day-length and falling temperatures, signal many living creatures to make changes to help them survive the winter. Some plants slow growth and production to enter dormancy. Some birds, insects, fish, and marine mammals migrate to warmer habitats. And some insects, reptiles, and mammals hibernate at greater or lesser levels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hibernation is a winter coping strategy that helps animals conserve energy to survive cold weather and the loss of food resources. During the inactivity of hibernation, animals experience a reduction in metabolism, heart rate, and body temperature. This state may last for weeks in some species, while other species merely enter a state of daily torpor that lasts for several hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

True hibernators tend to be animals that rely on stored body fat or stored food reserves to supply energy needs. The deep metabolic reductions don\u2019t persist for the duration of the season, however. Hibernating animals rouse periodically, sometimes eating stored food, and sometimes just elevating body temperature, perhaps to ward off hypothermia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Animals that cope with winter through daily torpor continue to forage for food outside of their dens, tunnels, or nests. These animals tend to be smaller mammals that can\u2019t build up stores of body fat as well as larger hibernating mammals such as bears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In mild climates and during milder winters, animals utilize hibernation and daily torpor less than they do in harsher conditions. That\u2019s because the ambient temperature is warmer, and food is still generally available in the environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How animals hibernate<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bears give birth and care for their cubs during winter hibernation. Our North Georgia black bears enter a deeper torpor than their cousins in South Georgia do, but they still don\u2019t hibernate as deeply as bears in Minnesota do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Diminutive bog turtles hibernate in groups or singly in borrowed mammal burrows, grassy tussocks, or mucky soil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
On warmer winter days, chipmunks will emerge from torpor and forage for nuts and seeds to resupply food stores. This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Throughout the fall, chipmunks gather and store nuts and seeds in their burrows to help sustain them during breaks in their winter torpor. On warmer winter days, they may emerge from their burrows to forage for food to resupply their pantries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Groundhogs are famous hibernators \u2013 or rather, famous for emerging from their dens in February after concluding their hibernation. Unlike chipmunks, groundhogs (also known as woodchucks) don\u2019t store food for the winter. They can use up as much as 50 percent of their body weight during hibernation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mosquitoes utilize a type of hibernation called diapause to survive the winter. They can\u2019t function at temperatures below 50\u00ba F, but they can resume activities \u2013 including biting \u2013 on those pleasant winter days above 50\u00ba F that we\u2019ve been experiencing. Wasps and some other insects also use diapause to help them overwinter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some species of frogs hibernate under water, resting on the bottom of ponds or streams and relying on the water to insulate them from freezing temperatures. In Canada and Alaska, however, wood frogs actually survive the winter as frozen specimens<\/a>. Ice crystals form around internal organs, but infusions of glucose from the frog\u2019s liver to its cells keep the individual cells from freezing and rupturing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
Wood frogs actually freeze during winter hibernation. Photo courtesy of the National Park Service.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

When hibernation ends<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just as shorter day-length signals the season for hibernation, lengthening days and warming temperatures stimulate a return to normal activity. That works well for animals whose periods of activity between torpor take them out of their dens where they can detect the changes. For animals that hibernate deeply and in dens that isolate them from daylight, an internal mechanism is necessary to signal them to wake up. That mechanism is a circannual clock that keeps up with day-length. As spring and its longer days near, the internal clock triggers the release of hormones that rouse hibernating animals from slumber. They can then emerge from their dens in an environment of moderated temperatures and rapid regrowth of food sources that will help sustain them until the next winter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Winter officially started with the winter solstice in late December, but the lead-up to the season arguably begins in June. That\u2019s when the summer solstice marks the day of the year with the longest span of daylight. After the summer solstice, the time between sunrise and sunset gets a little shorter each day, until we hit the winter solstice, which is the shortest day of the year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":192,"featured_media":437,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[149],"class_list":["post-435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anr","tag-hibernation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/forsyth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/forsyth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/forsyth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/forsyth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/192"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/forsyth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=435"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/forsyth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2279,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/forsyth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435\/revisions\/2279"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/forsyth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/forsyth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/forsyth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/forsyth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}