Dude, do you know how often I’ve been pseudo-intellectually nitpicked to death in GQ? I’m not about to leave myself open to that again, knowingly, with someone as knowledgable as **Colibri **around! I may be slow, but I am trainable! Choosing my words as carefully as I can makes things easier in the long run.
And yes, actually, bears do wake up periodically to eat and eliminate waste, especially in late winter/early spring. Only small mammals have what’s considered true hibernation. That’s why I chose the words I did, knowing that if a bear expert or hibernation expert was around, I’d likely be pounced on for saying they “hibernate”.
No, it’s using the word in its precise technical sense, rather than its more casual, popular sense. Like “instinct,” hibernation can be used in both ways.
I’ll tell you something, I try to choose my words here very carefully too. I don’t know how many times I’ve used a word in a casual sense (like “plant” or “reptile,” for example) here only to corrected because it wasn’t accurate in the technical biological sense.
I suspect that the concept of hibernation has been redefined behind my back, so I’m going to wait until I get more information before I destroy any kiddies loving images of mama bear sleeping peacefully through the cold, cold winter.
I just cannot “let it alone”.
I shall throw the question out there to all dopers, including those who may not be following this hijacked thread.
Feel free to join in.
There are numerous populations of feral chickens around the world. The Bantam type breeds are remarkably close to the ancestral jungle fowl and retain all the instincts of their ancestors and go feral very easily. Event he larger breed slike leghorns retain the instintive drives to scrtach, hunt, crow etc.
If there are no feral poodles it’s just because they are too rare and well cared for. Poodles are certainly perfectly capable of surviving in the wild. Contrary to their image as pampered wimps poodles are in fact a large, intelligent and fairly agressive breed of dog. They were bred for hunting and in large part because they are low maintainence. In many ways they are ideally suited to surviving with no human intervention.
