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Winter
can be a long season in Muskoka if you are not into outdoor
sports and activities, or if you can’t go south and spend
the winter in warmer climes.
However, sleeping the
winter nights away in front of the wood stove, dreaming of
spring, is probably the closest attempt we humans can get to
hibernation.
There are some
hibernators in Muskoka, though. Groundhogs are one of these,
of course, as are chipmunks, jumping mice, raccoons, skunks,
bats, bears, turtles, frogs, toads and snakes. Squirrels of
any colour -- red, gray or black -- don’t actually
hibernate, it seems.
The Muskoka Heritage
Foundation explains some of what happens during hibernation
in their leaflet entitled, ‘A
long winter’s nap’.
“For
reasons that remain mostly un-known, some animals have
developed a means of waiting out the severity of winter.
They do this through hibernation, or a state of seasonal
sleep.
Hibernation
is a truly remarkable feat. During time of deepest sleep
hibernating animals do not eat, defecate or urinate. They
rely on their stores of an energy-rich substance called
brown fat to carry them through their long fast.
Of
all the animals that sleep away the winter, the one that
enters the deepest state is the common groundhog (or
woodchuck). It has the ability to slow down its metabolic
and breathing rates to a point where it may appear dead; in
fact it is almost impossible to rouse during this time.
While
they do enter a state of sleep, black bears are not true
hibernators. They often awake during the winter and search
for food if the weather warms up enough. Chipmunks also
slumber through the coldest part of the winter but emerge
from their underground dens in warmer spells. The very
common little brown bat snoozes the winter away in colonies,
usually away from their summer roosting site.”
Where
hibernators take their long nap varies. “Bears
usually just find a place under a fallen tree or root matt,
and then let the snow cover them to form a den,” says Jan
McDonnell, Ministry of Natural Resources biologist in
Bracebridge, adding that “sows may make a ‘fancier’ den, even a dug den, for
themselves and their cubs.”
Doesn’t
sound like much of a winter home, but apparently bears
don’t return to the same den site each year. Some animals
do, however, including snakes. “Snakes have a strong
homing instinct,” Jan says, “ and always return to the
same hole, (called a hibernaculum) each year to hibernate.
Turtles hibernate in the bottom muck of a pond or lake, and
skinks find winter homes in the rocky terrain where they
live.”
But no matter how the winter is spent, all of us, human and
animal, look forward to the arrival of spring’s warm
weather.
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