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By Elizabeth Preston
Hibernating animals need to be fit when emerging in the spring, so as to avoid being caught by predators.
- How these animals avoid muscle atrophy has been a mystery.
- Ground squirrels have provided a clue to their secret.
- Their bodies start building new muscle in late winter — well before they leave hibernation.
- Sometime during the final two months of hibernation, squirrels’ muscles started to pump up, even while the rest of their bodies continued shrinking.
- Scientists don’t have a good understanding of how hibernating mammals keep their muscles from atrophying.
Yet mammals that hibernate don’t have that problem. Rather than stumbling out of their dens on atrophied legs, they hop right into hunting for food and dodging predators.
How they manage this is a secret they guard in their chilly burrows. Some ground squirrels may have given away a clue, though. Scientists found that their bodies start building new muscle in late winter—well before they leave hibernation.