Biological Miracle – Wood Frog

Aquatic turtles have another brumination (hibernation) strategy. Since they breathe air, yet may get trapped under the ice for months at at time, they lower their metabolism plus have adaptations such as scavenging some oxygen from the water via rectal tissues as well as other chemical activity involving glucose and calcium.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/the-secret-to-turtle-hi...

https://wildlifeinwinter.com/painted-turtle

I have one at home in constant warm water, yet she can see the sky and decides to bruminate on her own: every year around this time, she starts napping in her under water hide for days or weeks at a time.

That's a word I don't know (and neither do you): brumation, invented in 1965.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/brumation

The verb ought to be brumate. But I guess the desire to pull it into line with hibernation is strong, this happens with lots of words. (Or was the influence from "rumination"?)

Our tortoise, even though he's in a very comfortable climate controlled indoor pen, tries to dig a hole every year to do the same.

He's not very smart but he tries hard.

Oops, thank you.

Weirdly, I do know this word and I learned it exactly two days ago because I wanted to know the technical difference between Hibernation and Sleep in Windows 11.

So I typed in "hibern..." to Kagi and it suggested "hibernation vs brumation". I got sniped because I'd never seen the word before. So yep, I did know. And probably would have forgotten by next week if I didn't see your comment! But now I'll remember forever, thank you.