Sub-Zero Squirrels

DesertFalcon writes "There's a Wired article about squirrels in the Arctic whose body temperatures drop below freezing when they hibernate. Scientists have the goal of applying this to humans in the long run. Could this be the answer to problems with long-distance space travel?" We had a previous story on this.

Comments

Don't bet on a quick fix, but learn anyway

[G4from128k]

These ground squirrels are probably deeply adapted in multidimensional ways to the low temperatures. In contrast, the biochemical pathways of people are all tuned to operate at normal body temperature. I doubt that there is an easy way to make the human body hiberate at low temperature. Too many systems would be affected or thrown out-of-balance by the cold.

Nonetheless, we can learn from hibernating animals. One area that may be promising is how bears maintain bone density during hibernation (pardon my potential redundancy if this was posetd on /. already). Helping astronauts retain bone mass during zero-G would involve a less severe chemical rejiggering than creating full-fledged cold-body hibernation.