To hibernate is for an animal to spend the winter in a deep, long sleep-like state to save energy when food is scarce. During hibernation, the animal’s body temperature, heart rate, and breathing slow down.
From Latin “hibernare,” meaning “to winter” or “to pass the winter,” from “hibernus,” wintry. It originally referred simply to spending the winter and later took on the biological sense.
True hibernation is like putting your body on ultra–power‑saving mode for months. Some animals drop their heart rate so low that, by human standards, they’d seem close to death. When people say they want to “hibernate” all weekend, they’re joking—but animals actually pull off this extreme energy hack every year.
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