UA Museum | Hibernation

December 15, 2012 - May 12, 2013

How will you survive?

This exhibit examines how animals stay warm when it gets very, very cold. Research into hibernation and other winter survival strategies helps us improve medical treatments.

What does hibernation mean to medical science?
Who can survive the coldest temperatures?
How can water stay liquid at temperatures below freezing?
Did dinosaurs hibernate? Do Interior Alaska bats?

"There's a huge creativity component in science. To do something new, you have to be innovative."

Brian Barnes

See hibernating animals.

Hibernation and the Science of Cold was created in partnership with Guest Curator Brian Barnes and the researchers at the Institute of Arctic Biology at UAF.

All photos: Řivind Třien, IAB

To support this and other special exhibits make your contributions to:

University of Alaska Museum of the North
Special Exhibits
PO Box 756960
Fairbanks, AK 99775-6960

Cope * Hibernate * Freeze * Leave

Find out what these choices mean.
Learn the advantages.
Discover the consequences.

Watch frogs freeze.

Seek the Survivors

Even though they must tolerate low temperatures in the extreme, the creatures of the far north are all around you in the wintertime.

Nobody knows exactly why ground squirrels have to arouse during torpor. That is the big question in the hibernation community.

Franziska Kohl

We study black bears. We had a suspicion metabolism was decreased in hibernating bears, but it's much more than we thought.