#头条创作挑战赛#
The dormouse with the highest sleep quality
Can you sleep for nine months a year? Ordinary people can hold two dormice in one hand, but in nature they are the ones who carry the handle in the sleeping world.
What is the difference between dormice and ordinary rats? Compared with ordinary rats, dormice are a little smaller, usually their body length does not exceed 20 centimeters, but behind their petite size, there is a tail of about 10 centimeters.
At present, there are 7 species in the world's dormouse family, with 15 types of collateral branches, and these cute mice have habitats in the United Kingdom, Sweden, China and Japan in Asia.
Because dormice like to eat the fruits of wild plants and the shoots and shoots of trees, they can sometimes encounter them by chance in orchards and gardens, but in the wild, most of the mainland dormice are still distributed in the mountains and forests of Xinjiang, such as evergreen shrubs and mixed coniferous and broad-leaved forests.
In terms of hair color, dormice are actually more similar to squirrels because they have very fluffy tail hair, and they are covered with a brown undertone from the top of their heads to their backs, but the shade of each part will change slightly.
These little elves in the biological world, if they don't encounter accidents, can often survive in the wild for about five years, but even for such a short time for humans, they can still safely spend nearly three and a half years of life for sleep.
At present, although it is not yet clear why dormice sleep for so long, there are several mainstream opinions in the academic community. First, through sleep, they can reduce the consumption of energy as much as possible and preserve bodily functions.
For dormice, because their food is very easy to obtain, the pressure to survive is not great, and like many other creatures, they will usher in the breeding period at a fixed time, so it is understandable that they are wide and fat, and the length of sleep time increases.
According to the researchers' observations, dormice will usher in the mating period of the entire population in the summer of each year, during which they will build nests in trees, and after successful mating, female dormice will give birth to no more than seven cubs, and dormice usually only give birth to two cubs in a year.
Second, sleeping allows dormice to spend long days, and as nocturnal creatures, the daytime will not only make them less active, but also the future of the entire population by a large number of predators.
Therefore, in addition to sleeping for nine months a year, they also sleep a little longer during the day, because the dormice have superior climbing ability and are relatively small, and finally combined with the cover of night, the possibility of their "death" will be greatly reduced.
However, although these views have corresponding supporters in the academic community, there is still a debate about which is the main influencing factor. And the only thing that is not debated at the moment is actually very likely to survive the cold winter.
Dormice are very particular about hibernation
In nature, from brown bears to snakes, everyone has hibernation characteristics, but even if they are all combined, they may not have the long-lasting hibernation of dormice.
In order to be able to ensure that they are not disturbed by other creatures during hibernation, their nesting methods are also very provocative. Dormouse's home is more like a bird's nest than a rat hole, and they reinforce three layers of defense for the small home.
Dormice create a sturdy support in the outermost layer of the nest, usually made of a variety of curvature branches, and they also use plants such as moss to add waterproofing to them.
The middle part of the nest, as the excess of the inner and outer space, will be filled by the dormice with a moderate thickness of bark, and under the layers of bark, the dormouse home has the most basic effect of keeping out the cold.
In the innermost layer, dormice also strive for comfort, using soft hay to spread on the bottom, which can even reach a thickness of about 30 mm.
However, not all dormice build in trees, and some burrow in the ground like normal rats. However, no matter which way to settle down, it is actually to escape from natural enemies and the cold.
After completing the nesting work, the dormice will also plan to survive the cold winter, the squirrel will choose to store pine cones in the tree cavity in the summer and autumn, but the dormouse will choose to become the big stomach king in the autumn in advance.
Generally speaking, dormice only weigh around 20 grams in summer and early fall, but when autumn is over, dormice can eat twice their previous body weight, which is close to 40 grams.
The fat formed by this early weight gain and the food in the stomach can fully supply their nutritional needs throughout the winter.
Because dormice are not like people, they can accurately grasp the date of arrival of winter, they are actually more based on biological instincts to take in nutrients and sleep.
This also leads to the fact that before they hibernat, some of them will enter the state too early, and the hibernation time will be too long, which will lead to insufficient food and fat accumulation in the abdomen, and finally end up in a dream.
In addition, the duration of each winter and the minimum temperature are not under the control of the dormice, so some dormice will be killed by the cold climate due to the lack of warmth in the nest.
In general, only those dormice that have been well prepared have a chance to wake up in the spring when the temperature warms up. And because dormice have a keen sense of smell, they don't have to worry about not being able to find food or not be able to return to their original nest when they wake up.
However, at a time when most dormouse populations need to struggle to fight the cold, there is a small number of dormice that have opened up another track, that is, to survive in the city.
Exotic pets are booming, and dormice are among them
In the steel-poured city, there are actually many hibernating species, or rather, it is their lazy and sleepy characteristics that attract many animal lovers.
At present, the types of pets that people can choose are not only limited to cats and dogs, but more and more people can accept exotic pets. Originally, this practice actually emerged in Europe and Japan, but now it is likely to become mainstream in mainland China as well.
In the case of pet snakes, the hot-selling models on the market are roughly corn snakes, pignose snakes, king snakes, and milk snakes, but although they are pets, they cannot escape biological nature, that is, hibernation.
In order to prevent them from getting sick or dying due to temperature changes, people often have to prepare special snake boxes.
Not only do you need to add heating pads, but you also need to have the ability to regulate the temperature, because temperatures below 5°C can cause frostbite or even freeze to death, and environments above 10°C can also be unsettling.
And now, pet snakes are not even about to satisfy exotic pet lovers, they have even hit the idea of dormouse, for this reason, the country has also developed a dormouse breeding industry, which is actually to avoid people directly going to the wild to catch wild dormouse.
At present, the captive-bred dormice commonly sold in mainland China refer to the Spanish dormouse. After consumers choose to buy, they generally only need to feed cat food or hedgehog food to feed them.
When preparing a Spanish dormouse nest, it can also be built in the same way as a hamster nest, but the only difference is that you need to prepare an insulated lamp for the dormouse.
Because when the temperature of dormice during sleep is lower than 10 °C, they may not wake up directly, and their perception of temperature is still relatively sensitive.
Whether the cute dormouse can live comfortably in the city depends on whether the owner is really attentive, in contrast, it is actually the dormouse in the wild environment that is more able to control its own destiny. So, do you think it's better for dormice to survive in the wild or as pets in the city?
Resources:
"Dormouse" Popular Science China
Dormouse Research, Blue Zoology