In this slightly hijacked thread, I was informed that bears don’t (technically) hibernate.
Oookayyy. But I’m not completely ready to accept that. I looked up “hibernate” in the dictionary. Dictionary.com has three entries, one of which is;
True, there are others;
but none that exclude this one.
I understand that dictionary definitions tend to be weak arguements, so I come to the vast resources at the SDMB.
Convince me, and millions of little children, that bears do not hibernate.
Be brave, all you intellectuals.
Peace,
mangeorge
As was explained in the other thread, terms like “hibernate” can have both popular and technical meanings. According to the popular definition of the term (as in the dictionary entries you cite), yes, you could say bears hibernate.
As the Wikipedia entry indicates, however, according to the definition usually used by animal physiologists bears do not undergo true hibernation.
I remember hearing some scientist arguing that bears really do hibernate, saying that the only thing was, because they’re so big, they can’t lose body heat as quickly as smaller hibernators, so that anyone using a particular yardstick of body temperature might well say that bears don’t measure up as true hibernators.
Ok, I guess I can be a little exctitable when long-held beliefs are challenged.
But I’m pretty sure that most people understand that bears don’t go cold while in their dens. But they do slow their metabolisms and remain quite still. The Wikipedia article states that bears are “easily” aroused during this time. I’m not sure that’s true, unless “aroused” simply means “awakend”. I’ve seen film of Polar bears having a pretty difficult time getting moving when they emerge in the spring, and the cubs running and playing while mom “shakes it off”. But that’s just technicalities.
As to the second part of my question; What do animal physiologists call the state that bears (and many other animals) adopt to survive the winter?
I think they just “sleep”. A lot. Of course, back when zoology was done by guys with notebooks walking through the woods, it looked like they were hibernating. It’s not until we started taking temperatures, checking blood pressure and heart rates and taking better notes that we realized that the three things that typify “hibernation” (low body temperature, reaching hypothermic states, drastically slowed metabolism and not being easily roused) don’t apply to bears.
I’m really sorry if I warped your world, Mangeorge.
Yes, they do hibernate and they are very, very efficient at it.
I’ve seen everything about this. “Bears are just sleeping, and wake up a lot.” “Bears are in a deep sleep and actually give birth while hibernating.” “Smaller animals wake up a lot more often than bears.”
Apparently, bears in zoos are not much good for study purposes as to their hibernation, because being watched changes what they do.
sigh another correction. This sounded kind of arrogant as wrutten and was not what I meant. What I meant was that I’ve seen it all different ways–bears hibernate better, sleep deeper, sleep not as deep, wake up more often, amazingly enough don’t wake up at all not even to eliminate . . .
Once again, it’s a matter of definition. Depending on what exact definition you use, bears may or may not hibernate. Most scientists, I think, would say that bears don’t reduce their body temperture enough to be considered true hibernators. The person who wrote Hilarity N. Suze’s second link uses a much looser definition of hibernation, and therefore says that bears hibernate. However, I don’t know exactly how much controversy there is between these viewpoints because I don’t spend a lot of time reading the recent literature in mammalian physiology.
I bolded that last sentence for emphasis, all by myself.
Don’t worry, my world was warped long before you came around.
And your answer is, according to the amazingly patient Colibri and many others, patently wrong.
The answer is, it’s ok to say “bears hibernate”, unless you aim to be scientifically correct. But you can’t just say “bears do not hibernate” without qualifying your statement by adding a word such as “technically”. Unless, of course, your discussion is in a scientific context.
Most all of the cites did exactly that by explaining that bears hibernate differently than other, smaller animals. Scientific discussion about this difference is actually pretty recent.
Still, you’d think the scientists could come up with a better word than “hole up” for what bears technically do . It’s definitely more simple sleep.
Sometimes it’s referred to as seasonal torpor, or winter dormancy. A few sites referred to bears as being super-hibernators, or as undergoing carnivore lethargy.
To be honest, I don’t think that anybody really knows what the heck hibernation is. I say this because I was watching a program on NASA’s research into the hibernation of a species of Alaskan ground squirrel (BTW, it’s really funny, because they keep them in drawers, and slide them out to check on them periodically! ), and the scientists made the claim that those squirrels are the only mammals that hibernate (which makes me wonder what animals do hibernate), all other mammals just go into a “deep sleep.”
), and the scientists made the claim that those squirrels are the only mammals that hibernate (which makes me wonder what animals do hibernate), all other mammals just go into a “deep sleep.”