Bears , but what they鈥檙e doing is not hibernating, at least not in the true sense.
is the sleep-like process that involves a depression of metabolic rate, body temperature and breathing rate that many animals enter during the coldest months. It allows animals to survive only on their energy stores (fat and muscle) until the hunting and foraging get good again in the spring. But the list of true or deep hibernators does not include bears, though it does include ground squirrels, hedgehogs, and some butterflies, simply because bears don鈥檛 depress their biologic processes enough. and bears just don't do that. Who knew there were levels of hibernation?
