Surprising hibernation of the black bear

2011/02/22 Kortabitarte Egiguren, Irati - Elhuyar Zientzia

• Zoologia

Researchers at the University of Alaska analyze the hibernation of black bears (Ursus americanus). The conclusions drawn from this study are very surprising. In fact, they have observed that the body temperature of these bears decreases little, while metabolic activity decreases considerably.

In general, the chemical and biological processes of an organism are reduced by approximately 50% with a decrease in body temperature of 10 degrees. In these bears only drops between 5 and 6 degrees. However, they have observed that metabolic activity drops much more than expected, 75% of the normal. In addition, after hibernation, researchers have found that the metabolism of these animals continues over several weeks.

Infrared cameras, motion detectors, etc. have been used for their study. They also had several radio transmitters to measure the body temperature, heartbeat, and muscle activity of these winter bears. This research has been published in the journal Science.

Image courtesy of: Øivind Tøien, University of Alaska.