Do any Bay Area animals hibernate in winter?
by Joe Mueller Our temperate climate here in the Bay Area means that most inhabitants don’t have to hibernate. Hibernation is a form of adaptive hypothermia, a continuum of responses to climatic variations that allow an animal to save energy by temporarily abandoning the effort required to maintain a constant body temperature. When freezing temperatures and snow reduce the availability of food, the energy an animal expends to seek out remaining scarce food sources is greater than the likely return in energy gained from consuming that food. In addition, staying active in colder temperatures requires more energy than in warmer weather. So in regions with cold winters, animals that can significantly reduce their energy needs will do better. At one end of the hypothermia continuum is shallow hypothermia, a kind of deep sleep where body temperature only drops within 10ºC of normal. This is the case with black bears which, even in very cold climates, don’t truly hibernate. Our local bears ar
