An animal that does not hibernate. Animals in winter

Nature uses many mechanisms to protect plants and animals from the harmful effects of external factors and dangers. Speed, strength, sharp teeth, poison - all these are active means of survival. Camouflage, symbiosis and suspended animation are passive methods that help to survive. The article will tell you about the winter hibernation of bears, answer questions about how clubfoot prepare for winter, when bears go into hibernation, 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 in body temperature by several degrees, breathing becomes rare, a slowdown in the heartbeat, and 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 a few days to many months.

What animals can hibernate?

Since childhood, everyone knows that in winter it goes into hibernation, during which it sucks its paw, and awakens only in the spring. And the answer to the question of when bears go into hibernation is known even to children - in late autumn.

In fact, bears do not go into real hibernation, which is essentially suspended animation of the body. They only fall into a shallow sleep, waking up easily if disturbed. During this sleep, the bears' body temperature drops to 31 °C, while the animal's normal temperature is approximately 38 °C. For comparison: the body temperature of the American ground squirrel, which in the active state is 38 ° C, drops to zero during hibernation! Still, Toptygin’s body works in economy mode, the number of heart beats decreases to ten per minute, and metabolic processes slow down several times.

How a clubfoot bear prepares for hibernation. Fat accumulation

In order to successfully overwinter, two issues need to be resolved:

• accumulate energy reserves;
• prepare a den for wintering.

Energy reserves are fat. To accumulate it, the bear spends the entire summer actively searching for food. He loves sweet wild berries, especially raspberries and strawberries, but he is not picky about food and eats roots, ants, fish, and small mammals. Closer to cold weather, the underskin layer of fat in bears reaches a thickness of 7-9 cm. Females gain weight up to 150 kg or more, males - up to 300 kg, with 1/3 of the total mass being fat.

A few days before leaving for the winter, they stop eating and actively empty their intestines. After all, when bears go into hibernation, they do not eat, drink water or defecate for six months.

Preparing the den for wintering

The second thing is to prepare a shelter - warm enough so that you can hide in it from the frost, and safe so as not to become easy prey for the enemy.

The bear chooses the place for the future den very carefully. Depending on the species, this may be a depression between tree roots, a cave or rock niche, an abandoned anthill, or a hollow tree. Sometimes bears dig dugouts, strengthening the walls with branches; very rarely they build high dens - a structure made of branches on the ground, reminiscent of a large bird's nest.

The bottom of the shelter is covered with spruce branches, peat, moss, dry leaves, hay, and when the bears go into hibernation, they are warm and comfortable in their bed.

The dimensions of the den are not much larger than the body of the animal. Toptygin always leaves a hole through which air enters his shelter. Surprisingly, the snow, while completely filling the den, never covers the “window”, so well does the bear know how to choose a place for it.

In what month does a bear go into hibernation?

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 Europe this happens at different times. The following factors matter:

• gender, age and physiological state of the animal;
• yield of bear food;
• natural area;
• weather.

The first to leave for the winter in early November are pregnant females and mothers with cubs. Female bears and males hatch at the end of November, and in the southern regions they can last until mid-December.

In years with a particularly large harvest of nuts and acorns, these dates are shifted a few more weeks closer to winter.

If for some reason a bear did not have time to gain fat for the winter or arrange a home for itself, then it does not hibernate. Such animals are called connecting rods. They are very dangerous because they behave aggressively and viciously.

Now the reader knows at what time the bear goes into hibernation and how he prepares for it. It remains to be clarified that Toptygin emerges from the den in the south already at the end of February, in the middle latitudes - in March, in the north - in April. Thus, wintering can last from 2.5 to 6 months.

I think that even my youngest readers know that there are animals that sleep all winter. These are a bear and a badger, a hedgehog and a turtle, snakes and frogs. Insects also sleep in winter (remember, last year we already received an answer to the question of where flies spend the winter?), rodents, and many fish. But the hare doesn’t sleep. And the deer doesn't sleep. So why do some animals need to sleep in winter and others don’t? Today we will figure it out with you.

Many children (and adults) believe that animals sleep in winter to wait out the cold. This is only partly true. Of course, there are cold-blooded animals - these are those animals that cannot maintain their body temperature themselves. In order to lead an active lifestyle, they need heat to come from outside. Such animals include reptiles, amphibians, fish and all invertebrates: insects, mollusks, worms, etc. As soon as the air temperature drops to a certain point, they all hibernate.

But they are not the only ones sleeping. In winter, some warm-blooded animals also sleep: many rodents, hedgehogs, badgers, raccoons. And, of course, the most famous of the dormouse is the bear.

Exercise.

In this picture I drew different animals. Ask your child to name which ones are warm-blooded and which ones are cold-blooded.

If everything depended only on the cold, then why doesn’t the polar bear sleep in winter, although it lives in a much colder climate than the brown one? We already once studied why polar bears do not freeze in winter: they have a number of adaptations to keep warm. But the brown bear also has its own adaptations to avoid freezing. Moreover, sleeping is not much warmer for him than not sleeping. After all, in winter bears sleep not only in closed dens dug in the ground (which are called ground), but they also use high-mounted dens, i.e. simply holes in which they sleep right under the snow. And they are probably cold there.

This means that something else besides the cold causes animals to hibernate in winter. How else does winter differ from other seasons, besides low air temperatures? Lack of vegetation. There is no grass, no berries, no flowers, no green leaves. Therefore, herbivores that primarily fed on them experience great difficulties with nutrition.

Ask your child what wild animals he knows (domestic animals are not counted here, since humans take care of their nutrition) that feed on vegetation? These are deer, elk, roe deer, wild boars and other ungulates. These are many species of birds and fish. These are rodents. And if large herbivorous animals can somehow get food for themselves: by digging it out from under the snow, switching to feeding on branches and bark of plants, moss, etc., then small animals cannot survive without plants. That's why they hibernate. In winter, many rodents sleep: gophers, hamsters, marmots, and dormouse.

And since in winter there is not only vegetation, but also small rodents, frogs, worms, mollusks and other small living creatures, as well as insects, then the animals that feed on them have nothing to eat: many birds, hedgehogs, shrews, bats, badgers, raccoons -gargles and bears. And they have to either move to warm regions where insects do not sleep (as birds do), or hibernate (as hedgehogs do). And some do this at the same time: for example, insectivorous bats - leather bats. They are typical inhabitants of urban buildings and are distributed over a vast territory, including all continents except Antarctica. With the onset of winter, the Kozhans migrate from the northern territories, flying like birds, to the south. And there they hibernate in caves, attics and other secluded places.

Cards, you can use them to complete several tasks. 1. Invite your child to take a card with his favorite animal and select from the other cards those that show what he eats. For example, a fox eats eggs, mice, hares, snails, lizards, and beetles. 2. Invite your child to find and make different food chains - who eats whom. For example, "grain-mouse-hedgehog". By the way, animals hibernate not only from cold, but also from heat. In addition to winter, there is also summer hibernation. Those animals that cannot maintain the body temperature they need in conditions of high temperature and drought fall into it. These are some fish and amphibians, as well as mammals. For example, the African hedgehog and the tenrec (Madagascar insectivorous animal). The sandy gopher, which lives in Central Asia, Kazakhstan and the Volga region, also goes into summer hibernation in June due to the heat. The most amazing thing is that his summer hibernation turns into winter hibernation without interruption! And he wakes up only in February-April. That is, this gopher does not sleep only 2-4 months a year!

Hibernation comes in different forms.

Very few animals sleep in deep sleep, which cannot be interrupted by anything: these are bats, hedgehogs, gophers, hamsters, jerboas, dormice, and marmots. Are you familiar with the expression “Sleeps like a groundhog”? They say this precisely because it is almost impossible to bring a marmot out of hibernation. In such deep hibernation, the animal’s metabolism decreases, the temperature drops to near-zero (from +5 to -2 in gophers, according to some data), the heart begins to beat almost 10 times less often than usual, and the breathing rate decreases 40 times. All this is necessary so that the animal spends as little energy as possible. It, like a computer or phone that “goes” into standby mode, lives in economy mode. This state is actually called true hibernation.

Thus, we can conclude that hibernation is necessary for animals as a seasonal adaptation to unfavorable environmental conditions. Some animals switch to other food, while others hibernate.

Assignment: Look at the picture with a winter forest and find all the animals in it. Which one is hibernating? (For the picture to open in full size, it must be opened in a new window by “clicking” on it with the right mouse button). If desired, this picture can be printed and given to the child to color.

Cold and harsh winters leave their mark on the life and behavior of animals. Everything changes for them: from their appearance to their habitat.

This can be seen in photos and pictures of burrows and nests in winter and summer.

Preparation

How do wild animals prepare for winter?

To survive in these harsh conditions of the cold season, wild animals prepare for winter in advance:

• change color
• stock up
• preparing their home,
• hibernate.

In various photos and presentations on the Internet you can see that some stay awake all winter, for others, on the contrary, hibernation is the best solution. But all living things have something in common - all animals change their behavior in general in winter.

Let's take a closer look at how animals prepare for winter with the help of photos, pictures and presentations.

A hare, for example, in warm seasons has a gray coat, but closer to winter it changes color and becomes white. Thanks to the change of its color, it escapes from various predators who are eager to feast on it. Also, the hare moves through the snow without difficulty and can repel a predator with blows from its hind legs. This is due to the fact that its paws are wide and densely covered with hair. The hare does not store supplies for the winter, so it is difficult for him in the cold. The hare hides from the winter cold and sleeps in a hole he has dug under trees or stumps. In very cold winters, it can move closer to people’s homes, feeding on hay or leftover animal food.

But the fox does not change its color. The only thing that changes in a fox is the undercoat, which becomes very thick in order to retain heat in severe frosts. She is not equipped to store supplies, so she finds mice under the snow and sometimes drags chickens from people’s homes. This wild animal does not particularly prepare for winter and does not hibernate; it hides in a deep hole, which it digs under the roots of trees or on the hills.

Presentations

Click on the picture below.

The squirrel makes provisions for the winter. Preparation for winter in this rodent begins long before it begins. The squirrel lives in tree hollows, where it carries mushrooms, nuts, and straw to keep it warm and well-fed in winter. In winter, she does not sleep and changes color to a light gray coat. Pictures, photos and presentation clearly demonstrate the behavior of the animal.

All hibernating animals prepare especially carefully for the cold season, because they sleep all winter, so their sleeping place should be safe and warm.

Animals that sleep in winter:

1. the Bears,
2. raccoons,
3. badgers,
4. jerboas,
5. hamsters,
6. chipmunks and others.

Lists with pictures

Bears have their own distinctive feature - they hibernate, which lasts all winter.

Why is this happening?

In winter, it is difficult for a bear to find enough food, especially plant food, so he has to sleep in his den. The bear's den looks like the one shown in the picture. Here are several options for bear dens:

• 1 - soil den
• 2 - semi-ground den
• 3.4 - riding dens

The bear prepares for winter carefully. The hibernation of this predator lasts from three months to six months. During hibernation, the work of his entire body is reorganized. Breathing and heartbeat slow down, and sleeping bears feed only on the reserve of subcutaneous fat. During the wintering period, the animal sleeps and loses about half of its own weight, molts, but does not change color. Those bears that have not hibernated are especially dangerous, since in search of food they often damage people's households or fall upon hunters.

As for polar bears, they do not always hibernate, but only mother bears with cubs. This is due to the fact that polar bears eat exclusively meat and fish. This diet is enough for them to maintain full functioning. They don't need to stock up.

You can look at the life of bears in winter in more detail using and find out: “Why do bears sleep in winter?”

It's not easy for birds in winter. To combat harsh weather conditions, they have special adaptations to winter life. In the fall they grow combs or horny fringes, and in the spring these downy growths fall off. Sometimes birds change color - plumage, which allows them to blend into the surrounding background.

Forest birds find food on bushes and trees, feeding on pine and spruce cones, pine nuts or mountain ash. Relationships between different bird species change during the winter. They form flocks from different families, sharing the process of searching for food.

It is difficult for birds that feed on the ground. Ground food is problematic in winter, so it is people who can help the birds. Building a birdhouse and providing birds with food means not just helping our smaller brothers survive the harsh winter, but saving their lives. We also have the opportunity to observe their behavior and take interesting photos. Therefore, not only animals, but also people need to prepare for winter.

Birds

Developmental didactic tasks and games

We develop the child's fine motor skills. Here you need to help the bear get into the den - circle the dotted lines with a pencil.

We learn to sort with children from smallest to largest and vice versa from largest to smallest.

A game to develop a child’s mathematical abilities - we learn numbers, we learn to count. We cut out the bear and distribute it among various dens.

Pets

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02.09.15 14:39

Hibernation is a state of an animal's body in which a number of vital processes slow down. This allows you to survive severe frosts, heat or periods of forced fasting. Many people know which animals hibernate, but not everyone knows the subtleties and features of this process, which are characteristic of certain families and even species. The benefits of hibernation are enjoyed by both warm-blooded animals and their cold-blooded counterparts. This phenomenon also happens among pets; it is worth familiarizing yourself with its nuances even before acquiring a new friend, so as not to panic when there are changes in his behavior.

What animals hibernate - representatives of wild fauna

Since autumn, shaggy giants have been preparing a den for themselves, using ravines, caves or the roots of massive trees. They line it with dry grass, soft moss and spruce branches. From the end of summer, bears begin to feed intensively, depositing the resulting substances in the form of subcutaneous fat. The state into which animals plunge is more like a very deep sleep with a slight increase in body temperature. They remain fully alert, react sensitively to stimuli, and can wake up from a feeling of hunger. After a short wandering through the forest, the connecting rod bear occupies a new den.

Badgers, chipmunks, gophers, raccoons

These rodents are quite sensitive sleepers. During the winter, they wake up several times to satisfy their hunger with supplies. Gophers can “fall asleep” even in summer, suffering from a lack of food.

The hibernation of these animals can last up to six months. All this time they do not eat any food, despite the fact that once every three weeks they wake up for 12-18 hours to stabilize vital processes. Despite such a harsh regime, marmots emerge from hibernation in a fairly well-fed and healthy state.

Hedgehogs, snakes, frogs

They differ in that during the wintering period their metabolic processes slow down significantly, the temperature drops, their sleep is deep and difficult to disturb. Hedgehogs prepare special holes for themselves, snakes climb into the soil below the frost line or crack, frogs dive into a pond or bury themselves. Animals bring themselves to such a state that the ambient temperature even exceeds their own levels. It is noteworthy that frogs that choose a pond for wintering do not need to regularly rise to the surface. They obtain oxygen from water by absorbing it on the surface of their skin.

They survive the winter under the bark of trees or in summer burrows, clogging the entrance with clods of earth and leaves. Wintering for them begins in early autumn, and the younger the individual, the later it hides.

What animals hibernate - amazing pets

May fall into a state of hibernation when the temperature drops sharply. In appearance, the animal will appear dead, but upon careful examination, it will be possible to detect the presence of slow breathing, the body will not become numb, but will be soft, the paws and nose will be cold. To bring your pet out of this state, you just need to warm him up.

While maintaining stable conditions, turtles do not change their usual rhythm of life. If the owner for some reason wants to put the animal into a state of sleep, then he will have to try hard. The pet will need to be fattened, checked by a veterinarian to make sure it is in excellent health, and bathed. This will be followed by a complex process of induction into sleep. It will need to be controlled; it is equally important to properly remove the turtle from this state.

I think that even my youngest readers know that there are animals that sleep all winter. These are a bear and a badger, a hedgehog and a turtle, snakes and frogs. Insects also sleep in winter (remember, last year we already received an answer to the question of where flies spend the winter?), rodents, and many fish. But the hare doesn’t sleep. And the deer doesn't sleep. So why do some animals need to sleep in winter and others don’t? Today we will figure it out with you.
Many children (and adults) believe that animals sleep in winter to wait out the cold. This is only partly true. Of course, there are cold-blooded animals - these are those animals that cannot maintain their body temperature themselves. In order to lead an active lifestyle, they need heat to come from outside. Such animals include reptiles, amphibians, fish and all invertebrates: insects, mollusks, worms, etc. As soon as the air temperature drops to a certain point, they all hibernate.
But they are not the only ones sleeping. In winter, some warm-blooded animals also sleep: many rodents, hedgehogs, badgers, raccoons. And, of course, the most famous of the dormouse is the bear.
Exercise.
In this picture I drew different animals. Ask your child to name which ones are warm-blooded and which ones are cold-blooded. If everything depended only on the cold, then why doesn’t the polar bear sleep in winter, although it lives in a much colder climate than the brown one? We already once studied why polar bears do not freeze in winter: they have a number of adaptations to keep warm. But the brown bear also has its own adaptations to avoid freezing. Moreover, sleeping is not much warmer for him than not sleeping. After all, in winter bears sleep not only in closed dens dug in the ground (which are called ground), but they also use high-mounted dens, i.e. simply holes in which they sleep right under the snow. And they are probably cold there.
This means that something else besides the cold causes animals to hibernate in winter. How else does winter differ from other seasons, besides low air temperatures? Lack of vegetation. There is no grass, no berries, no flowers, no green leaves. Therefore, herbivores that primarily fed on them experience great difficulties with nutrition.
Ask your child what wild animals he knows (domestic animals are not counted here, since humans take care of their nutrition) that feed on vegetation? These are deer, elk, roe deer, wild boars and other ungulates. These are many species of birds and fish. These are rodents. And if large herbivorous animals can somehow get food for themselves: by digging it out from under the snow, switching to feeding on branches and bark of plants, moss, etc., then small animals cannot survive without plants. That's why they hibernate. In winter, many rodents sleep: gophers, hamsters, marmots, and dormouse.
And since in winter there is not only vegetation, but also small rodents, frogs, worms, mollusks and other small living creatures, as well as insects, then the animals that feed on them have nothing to eat: many birds, hedgehogs, shrews, bats, badgers, raccoons -gargles and bears. And they have to either move to warm regions where insects do not sleep (as birds do), or hibernate (as hedgehogs do). And some do this at the same time: for example, insectivorous bats - leather bats. They are typical inhabitants of urban buildings and are distributed over a vast territory, including all continents except Antarctica. With the onset of winter, the Kozhans migrate from the northern territories, flying like birds, to the south. And there they hibernate in caves, attics and other secluded places.
You can complete several tasks using them. 1. Invite your child to take a card with his favorite animal and select from the other cards those that show what he eats. For example, a fox eats eggs, mice, hares, snails, lizards, and beetles. 2. Invite your child to find and make different food chains - who eats whom. For example, "grain-mouse-hedgehog". By the way, animals hibernate not only from cold, but also from heat. In addition to winter, there is also summer hibernation. Those animals that cannot maintain the body temperature they need in conditions of high temperature and drought fall into it. These are some fish and amphibians, as well as mammals. For example, the African hedgehog and the tenrec (Madagascar insectivorous animal). The sandy gopher, which lives in Central Asia, Kazakhstan and the Volga region, also goes into summer hibernation in June due to the heat. The most amazing thing is that his summer hibernation turns into winter hibernation without interruption! And he wakes up only in February-April. That is, this gopher does not sleep only 2-4 months a year!
Hibernation comes in different forms.
Very few animals sleep in deep sleep, which cannot be interrupted by anything: these are bats, hedgehogs, gophers, hamsters, jerboas, dormice, and marmots. Are you familiar with the expression “Sleeps like a groundhog”? They say this precisely because it is almost impossible to bring a marmot out of hibernation. In such deep hibernation, the animal’s metabolism decreases, the temperature drops to near-zero (from +5 to -2 in gophers, according to some data), the heart begins to beat almost 10 times less often than usual, and the breathing rate decreases 40 times. All this is necessary so that the animal spends as little energy as possible. It, like a computer or phone that “goes” into standby mode, lives in economy mode. This state is actually called true hibernation. Thus, we can conclude that hibernation is necessary for animals as a seasonal adaptation to unfavorable environmental conditions. Some animals switch to other food, while others hibernate.