Hibernation Timeline: Body Temp vs Metabolic Rate

Physiology

Q10 coefficient 2.5

Torpor set-point 4 °C

Burrow (ambient) temperature 2 °C

Cycle

Arousal interval 7 d

Time compression 24 h/s

Drag the chart to pan through time, scroll to zoom the time axis, or click the chart to trigger an unscheduled arousal (a real disturbance response).

Live Readouts

Body temp

37.0 °C

Metabolic rate

100%

Day / state

0.0 — Euthermic

Arousals so far

Energy used (actual)

If never torpid

Net energy saved

Spent on arousals

The real physiology

Metabolic rate scales with body temperature through the Q10 relationship that governs biochemical reaction rates generally:

R(T) = R_37 · Q10^((T − 37)/10)

A hibernator lets its core temperature fall to near the burrow temperature, collapsing metabolic rate to roughly 1-2% of the awake baseline through this same law. Every 1-3 weeks it interrupts torpor with a real, costly, thermogenesis-driven re-warming to 37 °C, holds euthermic for about a day, then cools back down. This chart plots both curves against real elapsed time (days), so you can pan back through the whole run and zoom in on a single arousal spike to see how sharply metabolic rate jumps compared to how slowly it falls back into torpor.

t = 0.0 d · view = —

Body temp (°C) Metabolic rate (% baseline)

Hibernation Timeline: Body Temperature vs Metabolic Rate