Hibernation attempt

It is of course well known that hedgehogs naturally hibernate. This is no different with White-bellied cones, although they hibernate and not really hibernate. White-bellied gels in the wild hide in their burrows during the coldest days in their habitat and spend several nights sleeping there. But unlike hibernation, White-bellied cones just wake up in between, they need to eat, drink, urinate and defecate. They are just a lot less active than usual. So they rest, so they waste less energy and therefore have more energy left to keep themselves warm during those cold days. Because some countries within their habitat can reach -5 degrees Celsius in those cold winter months! The difference with Europe is that those temperatures really only last a few days and it is soon well above 15 degrees Celsius.

In captivity White-bellied cones do not need that hibernation and it is also not recommended to insert a hibernation. That’s because it requires a lot of preparation and you really need to have a lot of knowledge of the natural course of events to be able to do that successfully. In theory it could be done, but there are no advantages to doing it in captivity. And without the right knowledge it is also very dangerous!