4 Ways Global Warming Can Affect Hibernating Mammals

How higher temperatures make a difference for animals’ winter sleep

Global warming and climate change can affect hibernating animals (credit: Shaber on Shutterstock)

Credit: This article is based on the scientific article “Life history consequences of climate change in hibernating mammals: a review ” by Caitlin P. Wells and colleagues (Full citation and link available at the end of the article)

The currently relatively rapidly changing temperatures due to human activities have far-reaching consequences. I have already described many different consequences in previous articles. These consequences not only affect us, they also affect animals. For example, in How Rain Influences the Number of Female Turtles I described how higher temperatures change the number of female turtles.

But many more animals are being affected, for example, mammals that hibernate during winter. Hibernation is also called winter sleep, although hibernating animals don’t sleep. The similarity between hibernation and sleep is that bodily processes are turned down to save energy. Some main differences are that:

• the goal of sleep is resting whereas the goal of hibernation is surviving periods of for example food scarcity,
• hibernation lasts a lot longer than sleep, and
• the processes to keep the body alive are at a…