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Showing posts with label Animals - Hibernation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Animals - Hibernation. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 9, 2014

MAMMALS KNOW HOW TO KEEP FIT DURING HIBERNATION - How they avoid muscle atrophy is still a mystery, but here is a clue

daily life©http://ottersandsciencenews.blogspot.ca/. Unauthorized duplication of this blog's material is prohibited.   Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full credit and link is given to Otters and Science News Blogspot.  Link to this post:  http://ottersandsciencenews.blogspot.ca/2014/12/mammals-know-how-to-keep-fit-during.html - Thank you for visiting my blog.
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By Elizabeth Preston 
  • Groundsquirrel4-300Hibernating 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.
You may be physically fit right now, but if you spent all winter snoozing and starving, you’d emerge looking a lot more “pool noodle” than “beach body.”

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.