Hi Igel
No they don’t seem to mind the cold at all. Here, all the others have hibernated, despite having continued access to food. It may be a coincidence that the hog still here hasn’t hibernated for a second time. She had a very disrupted year, having to spend months in Wildlife Hospital following a life threatening injury. So although, she is recovered and fit and well again, there’s no way of knowing whether that had any impact on her choice of whether to hibernate or not again this year, but it may have.
But yes, sadly, there may be many other hogs, unobserved, who don’t make it through hibernation time, for various reasons. Normally they would go into hibernation whilst they still had sufficient fat to keep them ticking over (and of course the other type of fat they need to start them up again), but if they wait until they are starving, it seems unlikely they will survive.
