Unsolved mystery: Why do animals hibernate? Is it a biological clock?

If spring is the season when everything recovers and a hundred flowers blossom, then winter is the season when many animals scramble to enter hibernation. Many animals will go into hibernation in winter, when they hibernate, they hardly need to consume energy, and the heat loss will be minimized. Do you know why animals hibernate?

Which animals hibernate? When do you go into hibernation?

Hibernation is an important way for almost all animals that are not hardy to spend the cold winter. Moreover, there are some differences between warm-blooded animals and warm-blooded animals in hibernation. Temperature-changing animals are also called cold-blooded animals, and their body temperature regulation is not controlled by themselves, but determined by the temperature of the external environment. For example, snakes are cold-blooded animals and will look for suitable opportunities to hibernate according to the changes of environmental temperature.

The thermoregulation of warm-blooded animals is controlled by themselves. Most mammals are warm-blooded, so when will they go into hibernation? When the weather starts to get cold, they will adjust their body temperature appropriately, and then they will start to hibernate after adjusting to the optimal temperature during hibernation. When they wake up from hibernation, the organs that generate heat in the body will be fully mobilized and the temperature will return to its original state within a few hours. So as to quickly enter the next stage of life.

Why do animals hibernate?

There are many opinions about why animals hibernate. There is a view that the external environment is the main reason for animals to hibernate. Because winter comes, the temperature will be greatly reduced, many plants will stop growing, and some herbivores have no food source, which directly leads to the carnivores who eat herbivores having no food source, so they have evolved the habit of hibernation in the face of harsh environment. This is more conducive to continued survival and reproduction.

In order to prove that the external environment is really the main cause of animal hibernation, scientists take bees as the research object and observe their activities at different temperatures. The researchers found that when the temperature is 7℃? When the temperature is 9℃, the bees' wings and feet stop moving, but they can still shake slightly if they are touched lightly. When the temperature drops to 4℃? At 6℃, these bees are completely paralyzed. If the temperature drops, they will go into a deeper sleep state. This experiment proves that the hibernation of animals is closely related to the external temperature. But this experiment only proves the influence of temperature, and can't draw the conclusion that external food factors also have an influence on hibernation.

There is also a view that the reason why animals hibernate is actually the result of their internal biological clocks. According to this view, the biological clock not only controls the hibernation time of hibernating animals, but also controls their metabolism during hibernation every year. The change of body temperature of warm-blooded animals during hibernation is also a biological rhythm fixed in their long evolution. Although the theory of biological clock control has certain credibility, it lacks factual basis.