Why bears hibernate? Redefining the scaling energetics of hibernation

Abstract

Hibernation is a natural state of suspended animation that many mammals experience and has been interpreted as an adaptive strategy for saving energy. However, the actual amount of savings that hibernation represents, and particularly its dependence on body mass (the ‘scaling’) has not been calculated properly. Here, we estimated the scaling of daily energy expenditure of hibernation (DEE H ), covering a range of five orders of magnitude in mass. We found that DEE H scales isometrically with mass, which means that a gram of hibernating bat has a similar metabolism to that of a gram of bear, 20 000 times larger. Given that metabolic rate of active animals scales allometrically, the point where these scaling curves intersect with DEE H represents the mass where energy savings by hibernation are zero. For BMR, these zero savings are attained for a relatively small bear (approx. 75 kg). Calculated on a per cell basis, the cellular metabolic power of hibernation was estimated to be 1.3 × 10 −12 ± 2.6 × 10 −13 W cell −1 , which is lower than the minimum metabolism of isolated mammalian cells. This supports the idea of the existence of a minimum metabolism that permits cells to survive under a combination of cold and hypoxia.