![]() ![]() The simple answer is, it’s just too warm.Īccording to the National Park Service, black bears located in and around the Great Smoky Mountains National Park tend to choose a denning site – like hollow stumps, hollow trees or tree cavities – for shelter in the winter where they enjoy long periods of sleep and low to minimal activity.īut their body temperature does not always drop like a true hibernator, which allows them to wake for short periods of roaming during brief warming trends. BEARS HIBERNATE HOW TORead Also: Want to know how to see a bear in Gatlinburg? Try these 7 tips So what makes bears in the Smoky Mountains different? Well-known hibernators include skunks, bees, snakes, groundhogs, chipmunks and of course, bears. The entire point of hibernation is to allow an animal to store energy when the temperature drops and natural food sources become more scarce.ĭuring hibernation, an animal’s body temperature decreases, their breathing slows and their metabolic rate drops. The fact is that black bears in the Smoky Mountains, unlike some of their northern cousins, are not true hibernators at all. It’s commonly thought that all black bears (both male and female) spend the entire winter sleeping in a dark cave, surviving off of a bunch of stored-up body fat.īut if that’s true, why do we see so many bears actively roaming alongside deer and elk around Cades Cove loop road in January and into late March? Do bears hibernate in the Smoky Mountains? ![]() Are Tennessee bears just weird? Don’t they know they are supposed to be sleeping? ![]()
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