Still look for such dormouse: these animals can oversleep 11 months a year

Some mammals hibernate with the advent of winter. This eliminates the need for animals to search for food in the hungry and cold season. Among these sleeping animals there are real champions: dormouse dormouse. These "sleepyheads" sleep for 7-8 months a year, and in some cases this period can reach 10 months. We offer to get acquainted with these incredible animals closer.

Among all representatives of the family of dormouse, the dormouse is the largest. But, despite this, the size of this cute rodent does not exceed the parameters of a small squirrel. These are very mobile and maneuverable animals that can be found in the deciduous forests of Europe, including in Russia. Sony-regiments live in France, Germany, are common in Eastern Europe and on the islands of the Mediterranean Sea. In Russia, these cute rodents can often be seen in the Caucasus, but they are also found in the Kursk, Nizhny Novgorod, Samara region, Tatarstan and Chuvashia. Even a population of dormouse dwellers living in Turkmenistan has been found.

They can be called tree dwellers, since they almost never go down to the ground. Nests are arranged on trees, in hollows and abandoned bird nests. Sony-regiments are great virtuosos in terms of wood-climbing and are capable of making grandiose jumps from branch to branch: to a distance of 7-10 meters. And this despite the fact that their sizes are about 15-20 centimeters.

A distinctive feature of sleepyheads is their love for a long sleep. Even among the representatives of their family of carotids, they are record holders. Usually sleepyheads sleep about 6 months a year, but sleepyheads sleep 7-8, and in rare cases they may not even go out of hibernation.

The fact is that these dormouse feed on the fruits and seeds of trees, in rare cases, green parts of plants. They practically do not go down, so their whole diet consists of what they can get in the crowns of trees. Basically it is a variety of fruits of deciduous trees and shrubs: oak, hazel, beech, hornbeam, chestnut, hawthorn. Sonya also visits orchards on occasion, damaging the future crop.

Due to the narrow fodder specialization, there is no reason for sleepyheads to wake up early in spring, because the seeds and fruits have not yet ripened. Therefore, these rodents come out of hibernation at the end of May or even by mid-June, depending on the habitat. Having hardly recovered from a long sleep, sony begin to mating games. The breeding season is very active and noisy. Of course, you have to do so much in a short 4 months. Sleepyheads need to breed and accumulate a sufficient supply of nutrients for the long winter period. Young sleepyheads also hibernate in the first year of life, so it is very important for them to have time to “feed off” before the arrival of winter.

In September-October, Sony-regiments are already beginning to prepare for hibernation. They descend to the ground and dig large burrows, in which 6-8 animals gather for wintering. Sometimes they can take advantage of other people's burrows or winter in the hayloft and attic, if there are settlements nearby.

But, as scientists have found out, sleep lasting 8 months for these drowsies is not the limit. Specialists from the Vienna Veterinary University investigated one of the local populations of dormouse. The studied dormouse live in the beech forests of Central Europe, so their life largely depends on the harvest of beech seeds. In the course of observations, it was found that dormouse, coming out of hibernation and discovering that a crop failure of seeds is expected this year, did not multiply and lay back in hibernation. Thus, the record for the duration of hibernation, which amounted to more than 11 months, was broken.