Out for a walk the other morning and what did we smell – skunk! Yep, that delicious smell of skunk was wafting around. ‘Skunks hibernate, don’t they?’ was the question and a quick ‘Yes.’ was the response. Then why the odour? Why was our skunk ‘up’?
Everyone knows and thinks they understand the word hibernation. In basic terms, most of us would think that an animal, like our skunk friend, ‘sleeps’ through the winter, however, that’s not the full story. In fact, there are very few animals that truly ‘hibernate’ (Little Brown Bats, Groundhogs) – instead, for those that do sleep through the winter, most enter a state of sleep called torpor or as someone described it, sleep ‘light’.
Both are survival strategies used to get through the winter months when lower temperatures and scarcity of food require animals to conserve energy and minimize exposure to bitter cold. Both involve lowering the body temperature, the breathing rate, plus the heart and metabolic rate to conserve energy. Hibernation is truly deep sleep. Torpor is also sleep, however, torpor lasts for shorter periods. A torpor state allows animals to get up to drink or defecate, even give birth (no one sleeps through that!).
Our skunk friend uses torpor to get through the winter, and we’re sure that with the temperatures going so crazy this February, the skunk was probably a little confused and the sleep pattern was disturbed. ‘Is it spring already?!’ Question is, will the skunk know enough about climate change and go back to bed?! There is still a lot of winter to get through!! We’ll keep sniffing the wind to find out.
