I read an interesting article in Live Science about a unique way a group of American alligators use to survive periods of freezing water, for a few days at least. As the temperature drops, the animals stick their nose out of the water and are thus able to breathe through the ice. During cold months the alligators also reduce their metabolism, a process called brumation, which is different from hibernation […]
‘Tis the season. Check out this video from YouTube explaining why certain species of reindeer do indeed have red noses. As Christmas draws near, these blood vessels will help keep Rudolphs’ nose warm as he leads the way for Santa’s sleigh. Sometimes I wish I had more blood vessels in my nose too as my nose is always cold in the winter.
Just in time for Thanksgiving… While wild turkeys are known to spend time in the snow, I read an interesting article about the effects of cold exposure on livestock during transport. According to the article, nearly all livestock animals are transported at some point in their life, which can be pretty stressful to the animals. In fact, some turkeys lose weight during transport and others do not even make it […]
Several of the posters and talks at the Experimental Biology meeting in San Diego focused on Weddell Seals. They are not only cute, they are really interesting physiologically. Emma Weitzner, a graduate student in the lab of Dr. Heather Liwanag, presented a poster on Weddell seals, which are studied as models of the physiology of diving. Emma and her team recorded diving behavior and collected blood samples from 1 week-old […]
To deal with cold environments, mammals have several options. They could produce heat by increasing metabolism or shivering or they could conserve heat by constricting blood vessels in their skin or snuggling with a friend or insulating materials. With this in mind, researchers wondered how varying levels of insulation (obesity, fur) in mice affected heat loss and how much energy the animals used to maintain body heat. Their thinking was […]
Dr. Clara do Amaral is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Dayton in Ohio where she studies freeze tolerance in frogs. She received a Research Recognition Award from the Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology section of the American Physiological Society at the 2017 Experimental Biology meeting in Chicago, IL. She prepared this award-winning guest blog entry to describe her interesting research: The Cope’s gray treefrog is a small frog that occurs in […]
