The bear sleeps

As the temperature drops and and winter is approaching, the brown bears’ will start to prepare for hibernation. Brown bears go down in their dens in November, and they sleep all the way to March-April. So they sleep almost half a year at a time.

While the bears lie and sleep away from the snow and cold, they neither eat nor drink. Therefore, they can lose up to half their body weight during the winter fasting period. For the brown bears, it is therefore important to get as much fat on the body during the summer months as possible, so that they can get through the winter. A brown bear should eat for a full year in only half the time.

However, the brown bears only burn their fat reserves when they sleep in the winter. Thus, they do not lose muscle or bone mass during their fasting period – they only loose fat. In fact, a brown bear loses about half its body weight during the fasting period.

Hibernation in Scandinavian Wildlife Park

The bears in Scandinavian Wildlife Park have a total of 9 underground dens, all of which are located in the bears’ winter facility. Here, each of the bears has the opportunity to lie down in their own den and hibernate. However, they often choose to go in to the same dens, because it’s apparently a little more comfortable to sleep together throughout the winter.

In Denmark, we rarely experience as harsh winters, as in the areas where brown bears live in the wild. The length of a bear’s hibernation period depends a lot on the temperature, so it varies a lot how often our bears are awake in winter. During an ordinary mild Danish winter, they often sleep 2-3 weeks at a time, wake up a few days and go down and sleep a 2-3 weeks again. If it is a hardh winter they sometimes sleep 2-3 months in a row.