Biochemistry Professor Kenneth Storey from the Storey lab. Comments on hibernating tendencies, and certain rehabilitating traits some animals go through once they are through hibernating in a CBC radio article.
When ground squirrels emerge in the spring after hibernating all winter, their guts shrink to about half their original weight, but their hearts remain unaffected because they need to keep beating.
Guts aren’t the only thing that shrink. “When male ground squirrels wake up in the spring, they have to grow a pair because they’ve regressed their gonads down to almost nothing.” Said Kenneth Storey