Question: Would you ever try to make other animals (such as bears) hibernate and investigate them?

Mike Ambler answered on 5 Nov 2018:

Hi Miguel, thanks for your question!

I would absolutely love to work with other animals… the problem is it is a bit dangerous and we don’t really have room to keep bears in the lab! There are some people in America and Canada who are able to sneak up on hibernating bears to investigate how they do it – that must be fun (and scary!).

As well as bears that hibernate, some of the most interesting animals that do it are lemurs (in Madagascar). The reason lemurs are interesting is because they are primates, which means they are surprisingly closely related to humans – we share over 90% of our DNA and way back in time we all descended from a common ancestor…. if they can hibernate, why can’t we?!