Question: How do animals know when they have to hibernate for the winter???

Pete Etchells answered on 15 Jun 2012:

That’s a great question! I”m not completely sure, but I guess it’s to do with animals knowing what time of year it is. When it starts getting colder, and food gets scarcer, they know to try and build up their food reserves so that they can survive the winter. I’m not an animal behaviour scientist though, so I don’t know the details. It also seems to be something to do with a substance called a ‘hibernation induction trigger’, or HIT. There have been some experiments done where the blood of animals who are going into hibernation are injected into other animals from the same species in the Spring, when they’re not hibernating – and the injected animals go into hibernation!