Bears 'hide' from hibernation due to warm weather

Conservation experts found that unusually warm weather was affecting the hibernation activity of brown bears.

Synevyr National Park in southwestern Ukraine on December 24 said that at its resettlement center, only three brown bears are currently hibernating. This is quite unusual because winters are hibernating during the year.

Bears have not hibernated in the park.(Photo: Facebook).

Insomnia affects 29 out of 32 brown bears living in the center. These bears have lived their whole life in the park. According to conservation experts, most bears hibernated last year. But this year's air temperatures are not low enough to urge them to go to sleep.

The temperature in Synevyr National Park is about 4 degrees Celsius, higher than the December average (-2.3 degrees Celsius) and close to the April average (6.9 degrees Celsius), bear time. come out of the cave after hibernation. According to the park, the area only experienced a really cold week, dragging three bears into hibernation. The rest are waiting for the frost.

Outdoor temperatures can be an important basis for bears to decide when and when to hibernate . Studies show that a few weeks before hibernation, the heart rate and body temperature decrease and they exercise less. When the temperature drops to 0 degrees Celsius and it snows, bears enter the cave to shelter in the winter.

According to the National Park Authority, hibernation times vary by species, from days to weeks (black bears in Mexico) or monthly (brown bears in Alaska). This process allows them to survive the winter months of food scarcity with snow cover and cold temperatures.

Recent studies show that climate change is changing the behavior of animals. The findings of scientists in Applied Ecology in 2017 showed that black bears hibernated less and left the cave earlier when the weather warmed up. The winter temperature keeps increasing by 1 degree Celsius, the black bear's hibernation duration decreases by 6 days. By 2050, the average hibernation time for bears in Colorado in the United States could be reduced by 15 to 39 days.

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