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.
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.
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"?)
> ...the wood frog’s liver produces large amounts of glucose that flushes into every cell in its body. This syrupy sugar solution prevents the cells from freezing...
All natural, no preservatives added, sweetened frog popsicles! Yummy!
I'm not even joking about this -- since frog legs are a thing people eat (taste kinda like chicken), I'm now incredibly curious what this would taste like if you "caught" these in their frozen state and cooked them.
Are we taking syrupy sweet meat? Or just a hint of it?
Curious to how long the frozen structure can "survive". I wonder if it's a good idea to freeze one such frog and thaw it centuries later (an amphibian time-traveler!)
Now I'm wondering all kinds of things about their brain. Are they capable of forming memories, and would they retain those memories after a freeze/thaw cycle?
Effectively they're dead when they freeze. I'm assuming there's no brain activity.. Which means when they thaw they're being restored to life. I wonder if any other animals experience this
Reading about them, it seems they migrate in winter (like half a mile uphill), but the adults always return to the same breeding pond in spring, so that information is stored somewhere.
Wood frogs only live 3-5 years, so they probably only go through a max of 5 of these cycles. I wonder how much cellular damage they accumulate during these cycles that they can tolerate due to short lifespans. They also have ~10,000x less neurons than a mammal.
Even if you had the biochemistry that was able to do this, how many cycles could a higher life form tolerate this, assuming it would even work? Complex life seems to sacrifice some resiliency, such as the ability to regrow limbs. Amphibians already seem to be particularly adept at regeneration.
"frogs don’t freeze once and stay frozen. Instead, they spend a week or two freezing at night and thawing during the day until the temperatures drop permanently below freezing"
cant even call that hibernation. There are other knock on advantages to bieng frozen solid, it would slow down and even kill a lot of infectious microbes.It may convey a certain life extension benifit.
And threre is not much behavioral adaptation needed,frog gets chilly, snuggles under a leaf,freezes solid, gets defrosted 8 months later and wakes up hungry and horny, not bad.
> it would slow down and even kill a lot of infectious microbes
I wouldn't count on it killing them. The cryoprotectants in the frog's body don't discriminate; they'll protect foreign bacteria just as well as the frog's cells.
I should of elaborated, many of the issues associated with,"conventional hibernation"
have to do with lethal infections aquired
externaly while hibernating, damp, cold, ....mold
as to the cryoprotectants ,side protecting microbes, clearly gut microbes and other internal flora ,would benifit......but ,big but, would a sneeky cryosuspension routine also include a freeze and clense
cycle?, why not!
and easy enough to verify,right!
Evolutionarily, amphibians are somewhat simpler than mammals, they're smaller than a lot of mammals and they don't live as long, so I suspect some of this is simply that "things that aren't there". They wouldn't have as many problems with advanced glycation end products because the temperature is so low. There's at least one other ice survival strategy: antifreeze proteins. The fir tree and a variety of arctic fish have these: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6691018/.
In all cases, I still don't understand how the membrane potentials are maintained or re-constructed in the thawing phase: any pointers?
Perhaps because ice forms outside cells, freezing ions in place. Even if there was a very small area around ion channels that was liquid that equalized all ion concentrations with the cell, when the extra cellular fluid thaws the original concentrations would be pretty much restored
Oh god. This made me wonder, what is wood, anyway? And I've just come away much more confused.
Bamboo is a grass and doesn't come from a tree. Palm wood comes from palm trees, except palm tree trunks are apparently a totally different type of structure than other tree trunks, sounds closer to Papyrus. No growth rings, a fiber type structure. Is Papyrus wood?
Any plant matter above a certain density? I don't think that's it. Corn stalks aren't wood.
Man, I don't know. I am certain that it must be plant matter though, so yes, a wooden frog would be a biological miracle.
It's worse than that. _Tree_ isn't even a well-defined thing.
> Trees are not a monophyletic taxonomic group but consist of a wide variety of plant species that have independently evolved a trunk and branches as a way to tower above other plants to compete for sunlight.[1]
Wood is secondary xylem produced by growth from the vascular Cambium. (Sometimes? I think the issue is that there’s more than one definition of wood depending on context …?). Growth rings?
But palm trees aren’t truly trees, right ? Just called trees…. They’re more of a tree like shrub? I think.
Trying to learn about this through claude was kinda funny.
Ask it to tell me about wood that doesn't come from trees, and it tells me about palm wood. I say, but doesn't that come from palm trees? It says palm trees aren't technically trees because their trunk isn't wooden.
Anyway, with your definition palm wood wouldn't be wood, and neither wood bamboo. Feels like the vegetable/fruit thing though, there just isn't a perfect answer.
But the article explains perfectly how they look like. White eyes, glucose filled cells, frozen solid as a rock. Bang it against a table, it's definitely frozen. Throw it back underneath those leaves.
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.
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"?)
The wiki also mentions that urea is produced, in addition to glucose, and both act as cryoprotectants.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_frog
All natural, no preservatives added, sweetened frog popsicles! Yummy!
Are we taking syrupy sweet meat? Or just a hint of it?
- New study [2]: 7 months (with 100% survival rate)
So further study seems to be needed.
[1] https://journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/216/18/3461/1160...
[2] https://journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/217/12/2193/1211...
Effectively they're dead when they freeze. I'm assuming there's no brain activity.. Which means when they thaw they're being restored to life. I wonder if any other animals experience this
Even if you had the biochemistry that was able to do this, how many cycles could a higher life form tolerate this, assuming it would even work? Complex life seems to sacrifice some resiliency, such as the ability to regrow limbs. Amphibians already seem to be particularly adept at regeneration.
https://shakerlakes.org/frozen-frogs/
I think it would be more interesting if it doesn't affect lifespan. It would be a really counter-intuitive result (to me).
I wouldn't count on it killing them. The cryoprotectants in the frog's body don't discriminate; they'll protect foreign bacteria just as well as the frog's cells.
In all cases, I still don't understand how the membrane potentials are maintained or re-constructed in the thawing phase: any pointers?
Bamboo is a grass and doesn't come from a tree. Palm wood comes from palm trees, except palm tree trunks are apparently a totally different type of structure than other tree trunks, sounds closer to Papyrus. No growth rings, a fiber type structure. Is Papyrus wood?
Any plant matter above a certain density? I don't think that's it. Corn stalks aren't wood.
Man, I don't know. I am certain that it must be plant matter though, so yes, a wooden frog would be a biological miracle.
> Trees are not a monophyletic taxonomic group but consist of a wide variety of plant species that have independently evolved a trunk and branches as a way to tower above other plants to compete for sunlight.[1]
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree
But palm trees aren’t truly trees, right ? Just called trees…. They’re more of a tree like shrub? I think.
Ask it to tell me about wood that doesn't come from trees, and it tells me about palm wood. I say, but doesn't that come from palm trees? It says palm trees aren't technically trees because their trunk isn't wooden.
Anyway, with your definition palm wood wouldn't be wood, and neither wood bamboo. Feels like the vegetable/fruit thing though, there just isn't a perfect answer.
Look, new rule: you write an article about frogs, you include a photo.