Why do some animals hibernate?
Winter's Cheat Code
Why do some animals hibernate?
Every autumn, something wild happens: whole species of animals just… vanish. Bears lumber into caves. Ground squirrels curl up in burrows. Bats cluster in attics. They're not hiding from predators or migrating south — they're shutting down for months. Why would an animal choose to sleep through an entire season?
The problem is winter itself. When snow blankets the ground and ice locks up the streams, food becomes almost impossible to find. A bear that stays active needs thousands of calories a day — berries, fish, roots, insects. But winter offers mostly frozen dirt and bare branches. An animal faces a brutal choice: find a way to survive on nothing, or burn through all its energy searching for food that isn't there.
