Neuroscience

Scientists make squirrels hibernate

Hibernation is an essential survival strategy for some animals and scientists have long thought it could also hold promise for human survival. But how hibernation works is largely unknown. Scientists at the University of ...

Medical research

Researchers find protein that regulates the burning of body fat

Muscle movements generate body heat. However, body heat can also be generated in another way: body fat contains a small number of brown adipose cells – special fat cells that can generate heat without muscle activity. They ...

Cardiology

Woodchucks and sudden cardiac death

How much calcium could a hibernating woodchuck's heart cells sequester, if a hibernating woodchuck's heart cells could sequester calcium? More than enough, it turns out, to protect the animals from cardiac arrhythmias – ...

Other

Argentine 'miracle baby' in critical condition

A premature baby who survived hours in a morgue refrigerator after being mistakenly declared dead has suffered a cardiac arrest and is in critical condition, Argentine doctors said Friday.

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Hibernation

Hibernation is a state of inactivity and metabolic depression in animals, characterized by lower body temperature, slower breathing, and lower metabolic rate. Hibernating animals conserve food, especially during winter when food supplies are limited, tapping energy reserves, body fat, at a slow rate. It is the animal's slowed metabolic rate which leads to a reduction in body temperature and not the other way around.

Hibernation may last several days or weeks depending on species, ambient temperature, time of year, and fur on the animal's body. The typical winter season for a hibernator is characterized by periods of hibernation interrupted by sporadic euthermic arousals wherein body temperature is restored to typical levels. There is a hypothesis that hibernators build a need for sleep during hibernation more slowly than normally, and must occasionally warm up in order to sleep. This has been supported by some evidence in the arctic ground squirrel.

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