Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know Frondhouse stuff Works dot Com. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W.
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant, and Jerry. So this is Stuff you Should
Speaker 1: Know the podcast. Can I start off with a request
Speaker 1: of advice? Agrest of advice some advice which is in
Speaker 1: the form of a request M This sounds a passive
Speaker 1: aggressive No it's not. It's to our listeners. We often
Speaker 1: get people that say, hey, um, I'm years behind. I'm
Speaker 1: writing you about the episode from two thousand eight, two
Speaker 1: thousand nine. Uh, And we love it when people go
Speaker 1: back and listen to all the podcasts in order, right,
Speaker 1: But what really helps us out is if you want
Speaker 1: to start at the beginning and also listen to the
Speaker 1: most recent episode. Does that work? Yeah? I call it sandwiching.
Speaker 1: Oh really, that's the term for yeah, you started. If
Speaker 1: you want to start at the beginning, that's great. But
Speaker 1: it also really helps us out if you listen to
Speaker 1: the most recent one. And um, so I just want
Speaker 1: to throw it out there. You know, we don't want
Speaker 1: to tell you how to listen. I see what you're doing.
Speaker 1: This is just a request or or you could just
Speaker 1: go buy yourself a two thousand and twelve camera. That's
Speaker 1: very true, right, but it does help us. And you know,
Speaker 1: if you really don't want to do that, of course,
Speaker 1: listen how you want. But um, it's good for us
Speaker 1: that the most recent episodes get listened to. And um,
Speaker 1: I think it's kind of cool then because you you
Speaker 1: can flash forward through time and see how bad we
Speaker 1: were then and how bad we are now and just
Speaker 1: compare off a little little different thing. Yeah yeah, alright,
Speaker 1: well put man, Yeah, just a p s A. Appreciate that.
Speaker 1: That's good. P s A. How's your Facebook page? Wait
Speaker 1: a minute, just occurred to me. Though people aren't listening
Speaker 1: to this recent one anyway, then they're not gonna not
Speaker 1: to do Maybe the people they live with, who sandwich,
Speaker 1: We'll tell them, Hey man, yeah, you should be doing
Speaker 1: in a different way. I didn't think that through. But
Speaker 1: what did you ask me? I asked how your Facebook
Speaker 1: pages going? Oh, Charles W Chuck Bryant, Yes, it's going
Speaker 1: well good. I'm on there a little bit and uh,
Speaker 1: putting an insider stuff like occasionally even say what we
Speaker 1: are recording that day, which is, oh yeah, we've usually
Speaker 1: not we guarded that with like Fort Knox, But occasionally
Speaker 1: I'll throw that out there. Yeah, that's good. And then
Speaker 1: other stuff, you know, insider heads up on performances and
Speaker 1: ticket sales, you know, dog and cat pictures. That's what
Speaker 1: I'm doing. I've got my own Twitter account to josh
Speaker 1: um Clark. Yeah, and where can they find you? On Facebook?
Speaker 1: Same same place. I don't even bother Okay, just go
Speaker 1: to Twitter, all right here the Facebook guy? Sure, what's yours?
Speaker 1: Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Yeah, it's like behind the scenes
Speaker 1: or just other stuff, you know, things that strike your fancy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a lot of admin and stuff for us today. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Do you want to do administrative details right now while
Speaker 1: we're at it? Nope, you want to talk about hibernation.
Speaker 1: So Charles Chuck, if you will. Um, right now, you're
Speaker 1: sitting there, you're thinking, you're moving your papers around, looking
Speaker 1: up and down, breathing, hearts beating at uh. You're got
Speaker 1: an eye on Jerry Um eating her fritos, eating her Freedo's.
Speaker 1: Jerry is burning a lot of energy too, but she's
Speaker 1: also taking it in. And all of this energy expenditure
Speaker 1: requires a ton of energy input, and in fact, we
Speaker 1: humans in particular, are not really great at um at
Speaker 1: energy conversion. Right. We lose like six of the energy
Speaker 1: if we break down glucoast into c O two and
Speaker 1: I think a t P and a TPS like this
Speaker 1: really powerful molecule that powers ourselves. When we do that,
Speaker 1: we lose like six of that potential energy to heat
Speaker 1: a waste, you'd think so, but it turns out we
Speaker 1: have evolved the channel that waste into keeping our bodies warm,
Speaker 1: which makes us warm blooded. Right. The thing is is
Speaker 1: we have something really important and maybe one of the
Speaker 1: most overlooked important technologies humans ever came up with clothing,
Speaker 1: which allows us to live outside of our normal habitat,
Speaker 1: which is the tropics and subtropical areas. That's why we
Speaker 1: spread about the earth exactly thanks to clothing, in large
Speaker 1: part in shoes to a lesser But that's part of
Speaker 1: clothing any important extent. Sure, but it depends on who
Speaker 1: you asking. Isn't it accessory? But if we if we
Speaker 1: were warm blooded animals that didn't have clothing and had
Speaker 1: kind of spread out into colder climbs, one strategy that
Speaker 1: we might have when it got really cold and food
Speaker 1: became scarce therefore the energy input was a lot harder
Speaker 1: to come by. Might be hibernation, that's right, which is
Speaker 1: something some animals do. That's right. Uh, it's funny. I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people think of bears and mediately
Speaker 1: when they think of hibernation, um. But not only do
Speaker 1: a lot of animals hibernate um bears. If you want
Speaker 1: to get technical, let's get technical technical. Oh boy, that'll
Speaker 1: be in the brain forever now. Um. Technically, bears do
Speaker 1: not hibernate. Um. We are going to call it hibernation.
Speaker 1: And a lot of people do. Say. You know, any
Speaker 1: animal that undergoes a period sustained period of like a
Speaker 1: body temperature drop and metabolism change, um is high hibernation.
Speaker 1: And that's what I think. But technically the real um.
Speaker 1: You know, if you get a pedantic biologist up in
Speaker 1: your grill, they might um push the glasses back on
Speaker 1: their nose and say that it's when the temperature is
Speaker 1: significantly decreased long term state. This is a sixty biologist
Speaker 1: you're doing. Metabolism slows drastically, and the the will energy
Speaker 1: coma like condition that takes some time to recover from. Uh.
Speaker 1: And bears are a little different because they aren't really
Speaker 1: in that coma like state. You can wake them up
Speaker 1: pretty easily. You should not their temperature, y, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's important to be right. Hey, you hybernating bear, um,
Speaker 1: and the body temperature of the bears don't drop very
Speaker 1: much compared to some other animals. But yeah, for our
Speaker 1: intents and purposes, as we're going to dig into the
Speaker 1: whole thing. When we say hibernation, we mean anytime an
Speaker 1: animal UM goes into this kind of state beyond sleep,
Speaker 1: with the goal of surviving a rough period of the year. Yeah,
Speaker 1: whether it's a shortage of food or whether um and
Speaker 1: it could be cold. Usually associate hibernation with you know,
Speaker 1: winter time, but actually, in the tropics there's something called estivation,
Speaker 1: which is hibernation during the hottest or driest times of
Speaker 1: the year. Pretty cool. Never knew that. Um. There are
Speaker 1: also reptiles who hibernate. It's called broomation and um. There's
Speaker 1: also torpor, which is a great word this is that's
Speaker 1: another confusing term though. Torpor can mean um. It can
Speaker 1: be an umbrella term for any hibernation strategy, right, or
Speaker 1: it can refer to a specific type of hibernation that's usually, Um,
Speaker 1: it happens on a daily basis, like a few hours maybe,
Speaker 1: And so like you're hearing all this, chuck, I can.
Speaker 1: I can put myself in the mind of people listening.
Speaker 1: They're like, you guys are talking about sleep, your dummies,
Speaker 1: it's called sleep. This is not sleep actually no, uh.
Speaker 1: And that's very important to point out because I think
Speaker 1: if you don't know about hibernation, like I probably used
Speaker 1: to think, yeah, bears go sleepy time for half the year,
Speaker 1: It's like none of that is correct at all. So um,
Speaker 1: it's it's very different from sleep. Sleep is uh. When
Speaker 1: you hibernate, you're really going on undergoing some pretty drastic
Speaker 1: physiological physiological changes. When you sleep, you undergo a little
Speaker 1: bit of a change, Like even when we sleep, our
Speaker 1: heart rate slows a bit, body temperature drops a little bit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: breathing slows a little bit, but nothing, it's not anything
Speaker 1: drastic at all. It's more of a mental change, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the big difference between sleep and hibernation. With sleep,
Speaker 1: your brain is taking time to rest. Even though there
Speaker 1: are plenty of phases of sleep where your brain is active,
Speaker 1: it's also very inactive for large parts of it with hibernation. Apparently,
Speaker 1: when an animal is in even deep hibernation, its brain
Speaker 1: is still um reflecting the same type of waves I
Speaker 1: believe alpha waves that has when it's wakeful, that they're
Speaker 1: just somewhat suppressed. And actually when when animals come out
Speaker 1: of hibernation, they apparently have sleep deprivation and have to
Speaker 1: sleep for several days afterwards. Yeah, that's the fact of
Speaker 1: the show for me. Oh yeah, yeah, like sorry for
Speaker 1: taking out no, no no, no, You'll wake up from a
Speaker 1: six month hibernation like I'm sleepy. Yeah, I gotta get
Speaker 1: some reths from laying around like this for six months.
Speaker 1: But it's all because of those brain waves. I think
Speaker 1: it's pretty interesting. Um, if you're in a zoo, you
Speaker 1: probably don't hibernate. I'm not talking about a guest and
Speaker 1: visitor at a zoo. If you're an animal living in
Speaker 1: a zoo, you probably don't hibernate because you're they're regulating
Speaker 1: your environment. Your food is not going to be scarce.
Speaker 1: But in order sometimes to give these animals a more
Speaker 1: natural life cycle, they will trigger hibernational purpose. Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: just like blast them with an ice ray or something.
Speaker 1: An ice ray yeah. Uh, and as far as when
Speaker 1: to hibernate, like when it all depends on the animal,
Speaker 1: on when they do it, and it depends on the
Speaker 1: animal and how it's triggered, like when they know to
Speaker 1: do it. Yeah. Yeah, So there's actually there's a biologist
Speaker 1: whose name was Jurgen ash Off and uh dr ash
Speaker 1: Off assuming doctor sounds like a bad Bond villain, almost
Speaker 1: um or an actor playing a Bond villain. Um dr
Speaker 1: ash Off came up with a term for all the
Speaker 1: different kinds of triggers that can trigger hibernation and sleepy
Speaker 1: triggs zeit geiber. Does that make sense to you because
Speaker 1: you're in a German so zeit means um uh. Right,
Speaker 1: So this, this wonderful term um is probably does mean
Speaker 1: in German sleepy time triggers. It's a good German band
Speaker 1: name too, yeah, but the yeah because there's not a
Speaker 1: third word. The third word. The three word band names
Speaker 1: bothered me. They're really tough to pull off, and when
Speaker 1: they are pulled off, well great, they're usually done very well.
Speaker 1: But it's also really easy to fumble a three word
Speaker 1: band name. I'm trying to of three word band names now,
Speaker 1: like Bachman Turner, Overdrive. Yeah, great one. Brian Jonestown Massacre,
Speaker 1: great one. Fleetwood Big Mac. I'll bet there's a cover
Speaker 1: band out there named that. Actually just saw a Fleetwood
Speaker 1: Mac cover band. Where were they called? I don't go
Speaker 1: to those tribute cover bands ever, but um, he just
Speaker 1: came to in the middle of one. No. I noticed
Speaker 1: there was a Smith's cover band playing and they were
Speaker 1: opening up for rumors. They're from Atlanta. Actually, the Fleetwood
Speaker 1: Mac one and uh, the Smiths one was tough. I
Speaker 1: had a hard time watching the guy. I mean, the
Speaker 1: band was great and he sounded good, but what was
Speaker 1: the problem. He was morrisying around the stage and you
Speaker 1: can't morris see around the stage unless you're Morrissey. So
Speaker 1: I just had to kind of look at the guitar
Speaker 1: player and Johnny Marring on the stage. Now, he was fine.
Speaker 1: But Fleetwood Mac rumors they are great, dude, I mean
Speaker 1: unbelievably great, really, And if you like Fleetwood Mac and
Speaker 1: you don't want to pay two hundred dollars to go
Speaker 1: see them, they go see rumors that huh. I mean
Speaker 1: he sounded just like them anyway, shout out to rumors.
Speaker 1: I guess so I might be on a new cover
Speaker 1: band kick though, So I found myself kind of perusing
Speaker 1: like what's coming in Atlanta, thinking like, yeah, that was
Speaker 1: kind of fun, right, who's coming? Soo? So are they coming? No?
Speaker 1: But there's uh a night of that of it with
Speaker 1: a C. D. C. Van Halen and one other like
Speaker 1: classic rock band is going to be all playing together,
Speaker 1: I think featuring the real Sammy Hagar. Maybe you never
Speaker 1: know in Michael Anthony too, although my hat's off to
Speaker 1: Sammy Hagar for stepping up to defend Michael Anthony like
Speaker 1: a year or so ago. Oh I thought you're gonna
Speaker 1: say hats off to him for not driving well too, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he did take up for Michael Anthony. All right, So
Speaker 1: we're talking about Zeke geiber and again this is all
Speaker 1: the ways that like hibernation could be triggered. And I
Speaker 1: think you said temperature is like the big one, right,
Speaker 1: that's the main, most common one. We talked a little
Speaker 1: bit about food supplies there. I mean there are many
Speaker 1: animals who are triggered by food supplies, birds most notably um,
Speaker 1: although there's only one bird that goes into true hibernation.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, chicken. Now the common poor will actually
Speaker 1: goes into like real hibernation from like five months, and
Speaker 1: other birds just have a torqu port like you were saying,
Speaker 1: a few hours a day. It's all they need to
Speaker 1: conserve a little bit energy. Yeah, and I mean again,
Speaker 1: that's the point, like you're trying to save calories, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's that's the whole point exactly. Um. So there's also
Speaker 1: something called photo period where the days start getting shorter
Speaker 1: and it triggers um a hibernation response in animals too. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And a really cool thing that this article pointed out
Speaker 1: was that they've done experiments where they've had animals in
Speaker 1: uh I was about to say, and capture locked away
Speaker 1: room studying animals that have no triggers like this going on,
Speaker 1: and they have this weird ability they don't understand, triggered
Speaker 1: by their circannual rhythm where they just know this like
Speaker 1: internal biological clock where they just know it's time. Pretty amazing,
Speaker 1: It is amazing. And that's in contrast of the circadian
Speaker 1: rhythm which we all know and love that makes us
Speaker 1: sleepy when the day ends. That's right, Um, let's let's
Speaker 1: take a break man, all right, are you ready? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go listen to some Fleetwood Big Mac. You know, Josh,
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Speaker 1: it beautiful, all right, Tucka. We were talking about um
Speaker 1: ways that animals know, and like you said, they just
Speaker 1: seemed to know naturally when the go hibernate um and
Speaker 1: when they start getting these these triggers, they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's starting to be time. Um. One of the first
Speaker 1: things they do is prepare a place to stay. They
Speaker 1: fluff the pillow, check out the sleeping bag. What else.
Speaker 1: If they're the hair Bear Bunch, they just basically settle
Speaker 1: into their awesome den. Do you remember them, the hair
Speaker 1: bear the Hairbear Bunch early seventies. They lived in a zoo,
Speaker 1: but they had like the coolest They had, like a
Speaker 1: TV and like a like great recliners and a barbridgerator. Sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: the hair Bear Bunch. You remember the um the bear
Speaker 1: with like the cravat and like the big afro. One
Speaker 1: of them had like a camouflage hat that covered his eyes,
Speaker 1: like the guy from Cypress Hill. No, I don't remember
Speaker 1: that at all, Chuck, you gotta check out the hair
Speaker 1: Bear Bunch. I think you might like them. That was
Speaker 1: my generation too. Yeah, that was right there. Interesting maybe,
Speaker 1: and my parents didn't let me watch it. They're like
Speaker 1: that that bears obviously on the dope who knows, uh,
Speaker 1: But you are correct. They prepare their little area depends
Speaker 1: on the animal on what they do. Might be a cave,
Speaker 1: a little ground squirrel or a lemur might um dig
Speaker 1: out their den and put some insulating material around it.
Speaker 1: We talked about polar bears. Yeah, the polar bear. Mom's
Speaker 1: kind of combine hibernation and um birth right. They dig
Speaker 1: out like a snowden, which again great movie. Uh. Sometimes
Speaker 1: they don't dig out a big area. Sometimes they'll just
Speaker 1: find a little tree hollow, a little shallow cave, and
Speaker 1: they're kind of partially exposed to the weather. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: I was thinking about that. When you think of bears hybriding,
Speaker 1: and you think of a bear hybriding in a cave,
Speaker 1: they couldn't be too far into the cave because the
Speaker 1: same triggers that that put them to sleep and and
Speaker 1: trigger hybernation, um, also bring them out of it. Sure,
Speaker 1: so they would make sense that they would need to
Speaker 1: be like partially exposed to the weather. Yeah. You know,
Speaker 1: so as the days started to get longer they would
Speaker 1: wake up, or as the temperature got warmer, they would
Speaker 1: they would kind of come out of it. And think
Speaker 1: about that. Um. Food storage is a big deal. Um.
Speaker 1: Sometimes if it's non perishable foods, you can actually keep
Speaker 1: it in there with you. Uh. And we bring this
Speaker 1: up because, UM, it's a bit of a misconception that
Speaker 1: the animals, some animals do knock out for months and
Speaker 1: months at a time, but some will wake up occasionally
Speaker 1: just to shove some food in their mouth and then
Speaker 1: go back to sleep, well, not sleep, go back into
Speaker 1: hibernation mode. So they should have some food in there.
Speaker 1: Or maybe they've just eaten so much prepared fattened up
Speaker 1: for the winter months that they don't need to eat
Speaker 1: at all. I saw somewhere that some bears um go
Speaker 1: for meeting in an average of eight thousand calories a
Speaker 1: day to twenty calories a day to fatten up in
Speaker 1: like the weeks leading up to to hibernation. So we
Speaker 1: talk about brown fat now, I guess, yeah, it sounds gross.
Speaker 1: It's delicious, though. Brown fat is different than white fat
Speaker 1: when we typically process fat um for for energy and
Speaker 1: heat it. Uh, there's there's something called shivering that it
Speaker 1: facilitates that helps us well, yeah, shivering shivering right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: just muscle contraction burns energy and releases heat. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: brown fat is great because we don't need to shiver it. Actually,
Speaker 1: the brown fat is oxidized directly and it instantly produces
Speaker 1: the heat. It's gives the whole middle part, so you
Speaker 1: don't need to shiver. It doesn't waste energy on muscle contraction,
Speaker 1: not at all. That's it's called non shivering thermogenesis. Nice.
Speaker 1: So that's why you want the brown fat. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that's what the bears bulk up with. I guess, I
Speaker 1: guess all animals do, or maybe not all animals, but
Speaker 1: an it's handy. Well, when you do have to burn
Speaker 1: that fat, whether it's brown fat or otherwise, um, you
Speaker 1: you use up a lot of that stored energy because
Speaker 1: fat is a great energy store, right. Um. And if
Speaker 1: you're a pretty large animal, you if you let your
Speaker 1: body temperature get too low, because again most of the
Speaker 1: time this is in very very cold climates in the winter,
Speaker 1: right if you, if we if you let your body
Speaker 1: temperature to get too low, it's gonna take a lot
Speaker 1: of energy to get it back to its normal warm
Speaker 1: blooded state, even even it's normal hibernating temperature. So animals
Speaker 1: have astoundingly something called a set point, and it's like
Speaker 1: an internal thermostat setting that says, when my body temperature
Speaker 1: gets to this this temperature, burn some fat and warm
Speaker 1: me back up. And uh, I guess all warm blooded
Speaker 1: animals have this set point, right, Yeah, but for the
Speaker 1: larger animals it's higher because again it requires so much
Speaker 1: energy to to to restore it that their body temperature
Speaker 1: never gets too low and their set point is being
Speaker 1: activated pretty frequently during hibernation. But if you're a much
Speaker 1: smaller animal, I think the Arctic ground squirrel is like
Speaker 1: the best example of of hibernation, especially in this respect.
Speaker 1: The Arctic ground squirrel a warm blooded animal. Their body
Speaker 1: temperature will get below freezing during hibernation and you would think, well,
Speaker 1: you know, that's got to be pretty terrible for him. Yes,
Speaker 1: it is. They lose bone density, they lose their teeth,
Speaker 1: their brain actually they lose like parts of it, and um,
Speaker 1: they come very close to dying or being dead. And
Speaker 1: then the thaw comes and they are they're they're aroused
Speaker 1: from their hibernation and all of a sudden they start
Speaker 1: growing all that stuff back. Yeah, it's pretty remarkable. Yeah, Like, oh,
Speaker 1: I just want to say, move right. Well, I go
Speaker 1: through that every year. All this is controlled mostly by
Speaker 1: the endocrine system. Uh, and we have these glands in
Speaker 1: our body that alter all these hormones and it can
Speaker 1: really control with great precision all these physiological changes that
Speaker 1: they need to go through. Yeah, I say, we but yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm an animal too, I guess yeah, party animal. Uh
Speaker 1: should we talk about some of the uh specifics of that? Right?
Speaker 1: So um and again like this is the reason why
Speaker 1: things like temperature changes and um, the changes in the
Speaker 1: amount of sunlight during any given day can trigger hibernation
Speaker 1: because those are capable of affecting hormones. Right. That's right.
Speaker 1: So you're picking up things like um, like when to
Speaker 1: grow your coat, it triggers melatonin production, which triggers a
Speaker 1: thick coat like coat thickening. Yeah. Right, your pituitary gland
Speaker 1: is gonna control that fat old up the heart rate
Speaker 1: and the breathing rate and metabolic functions. That's a big one.
Speaker 1: Intuitary gland takes care of a lot. Oh yeah, you
Speaker 1: lose that, you probably can't hibernate. Uh. Thyroid m that's
Speaker 1: gonna control your metabolism somewhat and your levels of activity. Right.
Speaker 1: And then finally, insulin, as we all know, is gonna
Speaker 1: regulate your glucose. Right. There's also something that was isolated.
Speaker 1: It's an opioid called datal d a d l e
Speaker 1: UM and they found that it lowers heart rate and
Speaker 1: um respiration in animals and that if you give any
Speaker 1: animal this, they kind of start to get into hibernation mode.
Speaker 1: So it's not like I don't think it's a hormone,
Speaker 1: it's a chemical, but it has like a hibernating effect
Speaker 1: on animals. Yeah, it's pretty cool. So some of these
Speaker 1: changes can be pretty drastic. The heart rate can drop
Speaker 1: to as little as two and a half percent um
Speaker 1: a chipmunk, for example, five beats per minute as opposed
Speaker 1: to two d that's pretty significant. Let's to the bat.
Speaker 1: Some some species of bat go from a thousand beats
Speaker 1: per minutes and they only breathe once every two hours, amazing.
Speaker 1: And the box turtle doesn't breathe at all. It completely
Speaker 1: shuts down breathing. But I mean that makes sense. Like
Speaker 1: when you are when you're running off of stored fat, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you you don't have the need to power cells like normal.
Speaker 1: Your hybrid and your metabolism is slowed because your cells
Speaker 1: aren't requiring the same energy that they have before, which
Speaker 1: means that you don't need oxygen or nearly as much oxygen,
Speaker 1: so you don't have to breathe as much. And since
Speaker 1: you're not taking in that much oxygen, your your blood
Speaker 1: doesn't need to pump nearly as much either, because that's
Speaker 1: the point of the heart and your blood is to
Speaker 1: spread oxygen through your body at least in last part. Uh,
Speaker 1: and the turtle, the box turtle takes an air through
Speaker 1: the skin, So like you said, it still needs the oxygen,
Speaker 1: but just said need to breathe to get it right,
Speaker 1: And it doesn't need much because the box tirtroles heartbeats
Speaker 1: about every once every ten minutes. Man. That's then two
Speaker 1: minutes later boo boom, alright, pretty amazing. Um. And then uh,
Speaker 1: most animals, probably all animals that go into any sort
Speaker 1: of deep hibernation, they have like x amount of fat
Speaker 1: stored up that they that should carry them through the winter. Right. Um,
Speaker 1: that's why you should never ever mess with a hibernating
Speaker 1: animal of any type because you will basically have killed
Speaker 1: it if you rouse it from its hibernation. It will
Speaker 1: take a tremendous amount of energy to to come back
Speaker 1: to wakefulness right and to bring that temperature up right.
Speaker 1: And so it just spent way more than its budget
Speaker 1: for um for the winter. So even if it can
Speaker 1: get back into hibernation, it'll starve to death because it
Speaker 1: used up a bunch because you some jerk woke it
Speaker 1: up from its hibernation. Why did you do that? I
Speaker 1: didn't do it. I'm just saying, uh, waste If you're wondering, Um,
Speaker 1: I know, we kind of gave it away a little
Speaker 1: bit in the Polar Bear episode about the poop and peepee. Um,
Speaker 1: some or most animals that go into deep hibernation don't
Speaker 1: do either one. Uh, there is no poopoo because they're
Speaker 1: not eating. Um all that all that food has been
Speaker 1: digested already and turn into fat. Yeah, so there's nothing
Speaker 1: going through the intestines at all, which must be a
Speaker 1: wonderful feeling. Oh yeah, you know when you empty outrook good.
Speaker 1: But the body does produce urea no matter what, and
Speaker 1: that's the waste product in urine and hibernating animals actually
Speaker 1: recycle that. Bears in particular, break it down into amino
Speaker 1: acids and use it. And if you think, well, they're
Speaker 1: not drinking, how are they not dehydrated? That comes from
Speaker 1: fat too. Pretty unreal, it really is. Yeah, this whole
Speaker 1: thing is just like it's unbelievable that animals uh evolved
Speaker 1: to do this to survive, you know. Yeah, but I
Speaker 1: mean it makes uttering plete sense. It's like the food
Speaker 1: supply dried it up for five months. Well, then just
Speaker 1: go to sleep, don't eat any food, and again they're
Speaker 1: not sleeping. Yeah, it's really tough to avoid that, I know.
Speaker 1: But just go hibernate. Yeah, I think we point about
Speaker 1: that earlier. We mentioned estivation, which is hibernation and hot weather.
Speaker 1: This is something I did not know existed until the
Speaker 1: last few days. Yeah, Um, in the desert. If you
Speaker 1: live in the desert or a tropical climate and it
Speaker 1: gets too hot, or if the food is getting low,
Speaker 1: you may not be able to survive unless you dig
Speaker 1: a hole and dig down into the earth where it's
Speaker 1: cooler and more more stable temperature down there. Or if
Speaker 1: you are a fish or a primitive fish that has
Speaker 1: lungs like a long fish, um, you may live in
Speaker 1: an area where the your body of water dries up annually.
Speaker 1: This is a good reason to estivate too, right, So
Speaker 1: long fish actually um produce mucus. They create a mucous
Speaker 1: sack around themselves that dries on the inside but stays wet.
Speaker 1: No dries on the outside, stays wet on the inside. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're like down in the mud, right, um. But the
Speaker 1: lake can completely dry out around them and they still
Speaker 1: stay hydrated and um, they don't dry out. They're lungfish, though,
Speaker 1: so they breathe through long so they have like a one.
Speaker 1: They also make a tube of mucus nbelievable that reaches
Speaker 1: into the air, so they can breathe while they're sequestered
Speaker 1: away and that's good eating too. I I don't know lungfish. Yeah,
Speaker 1: those are. Maybe we're related to those. We're both tetrapods.
Speaker 1: Did you know that, Uh, we're related to the lungfish.
Speaker 1: I don't think I did know that, although it makes
Speaker 1: sense because they you know, they're the only fish I
Speaker 1: think that breathes that way, right, I believe so. But
Speaker 1: they're also, um, probably one of the first fish to
Speaker 1: start to come out of water and produce what became amphibians.
Speaker 1: I just had to look up a lung fish real quick.
Speaker 1: You've seen it before. Yeah, it looks sort of like
Speaker 1: an eel a little. But they have like foot like
Speaker 1: appendages almost. Yeah, interesting, just like us. I have a
Speaker 1: foot like appendage. You can do two of them. Uh.
Speaker 1: So we talked a little bit about torpor with birds.
Speaker 1: The black capped chickadee has a daily torpor that it
Speaker 1: undergoes for a few hours and like we said, it
Speaker 1: just that's all. It needs, just a few degrees lower
Speaker 1: in their body, just for a few hours a day
Speaker 1: to conserve that little bit of energy that it needs.
Speaker 1: Uh and only that poor will will. Um, they have
Speaker 1: a drop and energy needs the poor will does. And
Speaker 1: then back in the spring when things warm up, the
Speaker 1: poor will needs about seven hours to stretch it out.
Speaker 1: Seven wait, seven hours of torpor, No, seven hours of
Speaker 1: getting back to north speed again after they wake up
Speaker 1: from hibernation. Because a lot of animals it takes a
Speaker 1: long time. But this, this little bird needs about seven hours.
Speaker 1: And he's like, all right, let's do this. I'm up
Speaker 1: and at him exactly. He's like that guy from Jerry McGuire,
Speaker 1: which guy, remember, the guy who like had like the
Speaker 1: interstitial interviews. He was like, every morning I wake up
Speaker 1: and put my hand, yeah, let's go. Yeah, you know
Speaker 1: they Cameron Crow tried to get Billy Wilder for that role.
Speaker 1: And there's a great story that he told because he
Speaker 1: just revered Billy Wilder. Billy Wilder, the great filmmaker and writer,
Speaker 1: directed The Apartment among others and Boulevard too, m M,
Speaker 1: I don't know about that. Maybe. Uh So Billy Wilder
Speaker 1: said no, and Cameron Crows like please, like this would
Speaker 1: really be awesome, and he said no. So Tom Cruise
Speaker 1: was like, let me, uh come to the next meeting
Speaker 1: and ask him, because I'm Tom curt right. So the
Speaker 1: Cruise rolls in there and asked Billy Wilder and he
Speaker 1: says no. And Cameron Crow how he put it was
Speaker 1: I could tell from the look on Tom's face that
Speaker 1: no was an word he heard often. And that's stuck
Speaker 1: with me all these years that Tom Cruise was uh
Speaker 1: told no by Billy Wilder and was just like what
Speaker 1: his smiling didn't change, is like the entire change took
Speaker 1: place in the light in his eyes. Pretty funny. Billy
Speaker 1: Wilder did direct Sunset Boulevard by the way he did.
Speaker 1: Um all right. And hummingbirds we should mention because those
Speaker 1: little dudes and d debts are very active, as you know.
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen them flitter around? Uh? They in
Speaker 1: order to do that, they have a heart rate up
Speaker 1: to twelve hundred beats per minute. So when you see
Speaker 1: the hummingbird and it looks like they're going like all
Speaker 1: over the place they are. It's not just their wings,
Speaker 1: Like they're in a constant state of high heart rate. Uh.
Speaker 1: And their consumption is so great that they used daily
Speaker 1: tour poor even in there in the tropics, Like every
Speaker 1: hummingbird you know has a daily torpor where they um,
Speaker 1: and I think it's like more torpoor than other birds even, Right,
Speaker 1: So it has nothing to do with weather in their case,
Speaker 1: there's juiced up. So if uh, if this whole idea
Speaker 1: of hibernation is like a really kind of ancient mechanism, right,
Speaker 1: and we're all connected far back into the tree of life,
Speaker 1: it raises the question, are can humans conceivably hybernate? Right?
Speaker 1: And that's a it's it's not just us asking that,
Speaker 1: that's right. So let's stick a break and we'll talk
Speaker 1: about that right after this. M h alright, Josh, can
Speaker 1: humans hybernate? Uh? Probably not. Well, it's a pretty controversial
Speaker 1: thing because there are some scientists that say, absolutely, we
Speaker 1: have this latent ability that we could tap into, and
Speaker 1: then other scientists say absolutely not. Asleep. Yeah, Um, we
Speaker 1: did a whole episode on therapeutic hypothermia that touched on
Speaker 1: a lot of this and actually NASA's got a contract
Speaker 1: with the company from here in Atlanta called space Works,
Speaker 1: and space Works has something called rhino chill where they
Speaker 1: introduce chilled liquids up your nose to cool the base
Speaker 1: of your brain. That's where you lose me. Well, yes,
Speaker 1: well you would lose consciousness, right, And apparently it slows
Speaker 1: metabolism and induces like a hybrid ation like state, and
Speaker 1: they're looking into it to see if they can use
Speaker 1: it for long distance space travel, like a trip to
Speaker 1: Mars or something like the exactly like in the movies. Um,
Speaker 1: NASA is very much looking into this kind of thing
Speaker 1: and apparently has been since the fifties since the movie.
Speaker 1: Said they basically, yeah, um, but this idea of entering
Speaker 1: hibernation or it's also frequently called suspended animation, that kind
Speaker 1: of thing, Um, it would help tremendously, Yeah, because not
Speaker 1: only would you save people from like the boredom of
Speaker 1: a six month space trip, you'd save them from going
Speaker 1: a little crazy from that. Save on food supplies, save
Speaker 1: on space because the people don't need to move around
Speaker 1: or exercise or anything. I guess it's slowing their aging
Speaker 1: as well, right, because I don't know that'd be the
Speaker 1: interesting thing. I would guess, so, yeah, because I would
Speaker 1: think the process of aging is the wearing out of
Speaker 1: your body from metabolism. And if your metabolism slowing, you're
Speaker 1: not aging. Sure, yeah, probably, I'm sure didn't shut it down.
Speaker 1: But andantee, there's a formula, you know, so there is
Speaker 1: I mean, there is actual interest in this kind of thing. Um,
Speaker 1: you found a cool thing from the British Medical Journal.
Speaker 1: Uh from geez, how long a d? Ten years ago? Yeah,
Speaker 1: on the nose hundred sixteen years ago. It was an
Speaker 1: article titled human hibernation and they reprinted it about sixteen
Speaker 1: years ago and they talked about these Russians peasants that
Speaker 1: did something called lutska. I think you nailed there, which
Speaker 1: is essentially, um, six months during the hardest winters, the
Speaker 1: family will kind of hibernate, like they don't do anything.
Speaker 1: They sleep as much as they can, eat a little
Speaker 1: hard tech, drink a little water, and someone stays up
Speaker 1: to keep the fire going. They you know, take turns
Speaker 1: doing that. But otherwise they are just bedded down conserving
Speaker 1: their energy. Yeah, that's it. They wake up once a day,
Speaker 1: Like you said, a little bread pick, a little water
Speaker 1: go back to sleep. Imagine that's gotta like I'm sure
Speaker 1: it's not so drastic like some of these mammals that
Speaker 1: we've talked about, but it's got to have a physiological effect,
Speaker 1: the desired effect. I mean, think about it. That's why
Speaker 1: they tell you if you're trying to lose weight, don't
Speaker 1: eat for hours before you go to bed, because all
Speaker 1: you're gonna do is just you're you're not gonna burn
Speaker 1: any of that energy off because you're just laying there sleeping.
Speaker 1: Same thing with this, I mean they're there. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like a forced pseudo hibernation, self induced pseudo hibernation
Speaker 1: that they're like, we're it's a strategy. We're not going
Speaker 1: to use up as much um energy. We're just gonna
Speaker 1: lay here. Yeah, it's awesome. Yeah. And I think these
Speaker 1: survival shows that you see to um they do a
Speaker 1: lot of laying around when the food is scarce as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's that's what you want to do. Yeah, Plus,
Speaker 1: but I think you're kind of forced to su yeah,
Speaker 1: because you lose energy. Yeah, you have no food energy,
Speaker 1: so you're, yeah, you can't do any thing. There's one
Speaker 1: other thing I wanted to mention too, you got something else? No,
Speaker 1: I mean, just you know, I remember a few years ago,
Speaker 1: I guess it was ten years ago now, I remember
Speaker 1: when that Japanese man was lost in the woods and
Speaker 1: claims that in some scientists agree that he went into
Speaker 1: a state of hibernation. Yeah, we talked about him in
Speaker 1: the Therapeutic Hypothermia episode. Yeah. I think we might have
Speaker 1: done one of our old video things on him too.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it seems like it man a while ago.
Speaker 1: We've covered everything, dude. But there's been other cases like that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: from people like stranded in cars. Uh, Swedish biologists who like, yeah,
Speaker 1: for all intensive purposes, drowning an icy creek was revived.
Speaker 1: That's yeah. I guess that's a little more like the
Speaker 1: therapeutic hypothermia huh. But no, the same thing with the
Speaker 1: Japanese man and the woman in the trunk of the car.
Speaker 1: They were both exposed to below freezing temperatures and it
Speaker 1: lowered their metabolism pretty amazing. And then there was this
Speaker 1: guy who was not in freezing temperatures. Back in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy three, there was a journal article I can't remember
Speaker 1: the name of the journal um that they did a
Speaker 1: study with a Yogi Yogi Satya Murky and for eight
Speaker 1: days he went into like a state of basically like
Speaker 1: meditative hibernation as far as they don't. He didn't need
Speaker 1: or drink anything. Um, he lost ten pounds four and
Speaker 1: a half KOs. His body temperature dropped down to ninety
Speaker 1: four degrees, which doesn't seem that much, but apparently that
Speaker 1: was the ambient temperature of where he was sealed often.
Speaker 1: And um, they had an e KG. They had e
Speaker 1: KG sensors detecting his heartbeat, and apparently his heartbeat went
Speaker 1: up to like two beats a minute and then started
Speaker 1: to taper off. And after like the first day and
Speaker 1: for the next seven days they basically couldn't detect a heartbeat.
Speaker 1: He like lowered his heartbeat so much. And um, I
Speaker 1: haven't seen I've seen it mentioned here there or whatever,
Speaker 1: but I've not seen anybody say, well, this is how
Speaker 1: he did it, or this is the trick. Um. It
Speaker 1: seems to be one of those weird curiosities of science
Speaker 1: that it's just kind of over there, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. I think I remember that. I'm like, that's incredible.
Speaker 1: When I was a kid. No, oh yeah, remember that show.
Speaker 1: I think I remember a piece on this dude. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't be surprised if they did. You have his name,
Speaker 1: Yogi Sachi Murty, different guy. There was another Yogi though
Speaker 1: on that show, Yogi Bearra. No, he could do the
Speaker 1: same thing right there on the bench. Da dugout? Uh?
Speaker 1: Do we should we talk about the hydrogen sulfide real quick?
Speaker 1: There's a cell biologist named Mark Roth at the Fred
Speaker 1: Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and cl and UM. In two
Speaker 1: thousand five, there was a big experiment where uh, scientists
Speaker 1: induced hibernation and lab mice by giving them h hydrogen
Speaker 1: sulfide gas and apparently it shut down there. It really
Speaker 1: induced hibernation, the body temperature, shut down their metabolic processes,
Speaker 1: and then they gave them normal air and then they
Speaker 1: were fine again. And they're thinking they're they're trying it
Speaker 1: now on roundworms, which apparently we have the same reaction
Speaker 1: humans do. What's it called nitrogen sulfide The effect? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like that initial not it's kind of like, you know,
Speaker 1: gas somebody and it knocks them out. Uh. And they're
Speaker 1: doing experiments that they think that might be the key
Speaker 1: to inducing this in humans, whether for space travel or
Speaker 1: I think what was one of the other things they
Speaker 1: said it would be good for is um oregan transplants, right,
Speaker 1: that's it, And by that I meant Oregon, not Oregon transplants. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and people moving from northern California. Um. I think they
Speaker 1: mentioned something too about people in vegetative states. Uh, they
Speaker 1: could help them out if they're if they kind of
Speaker 1: shut their metabolic functioning down while they wait for a
Speaker 1: cure or something. I'm not sure. The thing I saw
Speaker 1: about the that gas was that if you main exposed
Speaker 1: to it, you die, which I guess is like some
Speaker 1: sort of like inert gas asphyxiation. But it seemed different
Speaker 1: than that, Like, I don't know why that would mean
Speaker 1: that it showed promise for hibernation. Maybe if, like you,
Speaker 1: you expose somebody to it and then let off a
Speaker 1: little bit, and then expose them to it and let
Speaker 1: off that you could keep it up like that. Yea,
Speaker 1: like a good dentist. We'll go, we'll go run our
Speaker 1: own experiments after this. If you want to know more
Speaker 1: about hibernation, you can tape that word in the search
Speaker 1: bar and they'll bring up this article, which is a
Speaker 1: grabster article. Oh, that's right, yeah, marcro quality. Uh. And
Speaker 1: since I said grabs there, it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this wine growing. Hey, guys, enjoyed the
Speaker 1: episode on ice ages and commend you on your ability
Speaker 1: to once again distill a complicated subject into an informative
Speaker 1: entertainment piece. That's what we do. As a quick note
Speaker 1: from the wine industry, we often and I often personally
Speaker 1: prefer the term wine growing. You broke you both chuckled
Speaker 1: at the phrase in the episode, but actually conveys the
Speaker 1: job better than anything else. Grapes grown for wine are
Speaker 1: generally different varieties held to different standards than grapes grown
Speaker 1: for eating or juice production. Berries are smaller, contain less juice,
Speaker 1: more acid and sugar, and have bitter skins and seeds,
Speaker 1: which make them less appetizing than the grapes you find
Speaker 1: in the supermarket. The piece are the qualities that make
Speaker 1: good wine. In fact, many professional associations in the wine
Speaker 1: industry refer to themselves as wine growers. Unfortunately, the vines
Speaker 1: don't grow and finished bottles wine is made there in
Speaker 1: the vineyard, though the goal is to bring out the
Speaker 1: best in the fruit once it is inside the winery.
Speaker 1: I keep up the good work. I encourage you to
Speaker 1: try some of the wines from around Delanaga, Georgia. Great
Speaker 1: wine is made everywhere. You may be surprised. What is
Speaker 1: just down the road, Steve, Steve, Steve, send us some wine. Yeah, man,
Speaker 1: that's how we try some wine. I'm in the wine industry.
Speaker 1: Go try someone send us some wine. Yes, Steve, I
Speaker 1: like big beefy red full bodied reds, dry whites. What
Speaker 1: do you like? I love Rose's, Okay, I like uh reds.
Speaker 1: I guess fruity reds like z Infandel's and Sara's um
Speaker 1: and uh, I'm cool with any white's red champagne to Steve,
Speaker 1: or any kind of sparkling wine I should say. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I recommend to you and others out there to watch
Speaker 1: this great documentary. Did you see PSALM, the original s
Speaker 1: O M M documentary about the Somalia Master Somalia testing process.
Speaker 1: It was good. Uh. There's a sequel now from the
Speaker 1: same makers called Some Inside the Bottle, where it's just
Speaker 1: a look at wine. There are ten different topics they
Speaker 1: cover about the wine in the wine industry, and it's
Speaker 1: really really good. I'll check that one up. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: can learn a lot from it. Okay, it'll make you thirsty.
Speaker 1: We need to do a whole episode on wine. We
Speaker 1: still have yet to do. Yeah. Emily asked me that
Speaker 1: when we were watching it, She's like, have you not
Speaker 1: done this yet? And I said, that's one I might
Speaker 1: be most afraid of. Period. Oh yeah, worse than soccer
Speaker 1: chess what we did soccer and chess. I'm more intimidated
Speaker 1: by the wine podcast because it cares so much about
Speaker 1: it and you could do a you could have a
Speaker 1: podcast series on wine would be yeah, there are plenty
Speaker 1: so it would be tough to sum it up. Do this.
Speaker 1: We'll do it. We're doing wine, all right, it'll be great, Chuck,
Speaker 1: you'll love it so scared. Uh. If you want to
Speaker 1: get in touch with us again, you can hang out
Speaker 1: with me on Twitter at Josh Underscore, UM Underscore Clark.
Speaker 1: You can also hang out with Stuff you Should Know
Speaker 1: in general at s Y s K podcast. You can
Speaker 1: hang out with Chuck on Facebook at Charles W. Chuck Bryant.
Speaker 1: You can hang out with Stuff you Should Know on
Speaker 1: Facebook at Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know UM.
Speaker 1: You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at
Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot com uh and, as always, hang
Speaker 1: out with us at our home on the web Stuff
Speaker 1: you Should Know dot com. For more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics, visit how stuff Works dot com.