ABSTRACT
Hibernation can be described to young children as a deep sleep during wintertime. Those animals that hibernate need to do so because they are not adapted for life in the winter; they may not have adequate food supplies to see them through. Others cannot survive cold temperatures, and hibernation is therefore a way of staying alive until the spring. Animals that hibernate include badgers, dormice, bats and ladybirds. This chapter concentrates, however, on the hedgehog. Hedgehogs are frequent visitors to gardens, and the likelihood of the children having seen one already is high. They are nocturnal creatures, thus they tend to sleep during the day and are awake and active at night.
