Question: do you think hibernation would be like being in a coma?

Mike Ambler answered on 5 Nov 2018:

Great question!

When I’m working in the intensive care unit in the hospital, we sometimes put people into a coma on purpose and cool them down using ice-cold packs attached to their body. This is because it helps to protect their brain from damage.

It is this that made me interested in hibernation, because it is similar.

People in a coma are unconscious, which means that they don’t know what is happening around them and they don’t remember it. We don’t really know whether hibernating animals know what is happening around them, but when the brain gets cold it slows right down. A bit like when a smartphone is very cold, it runs very slowly. One thing that is interesting is that even when a hibernating animal is really really cold, so cold that we wouldn’t expect its brain to be working very well at all, the animal is still able to turn itself back on and warm up.. nobody knows how!