DailyDirt: Bringing Back The Undead

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Nature has a few examples of animals coming back to life after appearing to be dead -- and not just pretending to be dead, but actually surviving a state of very low metabolism. There are even a few bizarre news reports about people coming back to life. (Ahem, and we're not referring to a certain someone who is well-known for Easter.) Here are just a few examples of seemingly-extreme resuscitation.

• North American wood frogs can freeze solid and appear dead, until they thaw in the spring and get down to business. The trick is to thaw in the right way. If a frog's brain thawed before its heart did, the frog would have some problems. [url]
• Hibernating black bears stay dormant for 5-7 months without eating, drinking or doing much of anything. However, a hibernating bear's body temperature doesn't drop much -- about 10 °F -- even though the bear's metabolism is at about 25% of its normal rate. [url]
• There are a few companies working on cryonics -- freezing people who believe they can be revived when medical technology is much more advanced. Maybe these people are hoping to meet Erin Gray someday.... [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: bears, cryonics, death, erin gray, frogs, hibernation, reanimation, resuscitation

DailyDirt: Real Zombies...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Since it's Halloween, there are probably a lot of folks dressed up like zombies. But as we've mentioned before, Mother Nature has created a few of her own actual zombies. Here are just a few more examples.

• Did you know that the government sprays a baculovirus into the forest that can cause gypsy moth caterpillars to act reckless and even suicidal? The virus infects the caterpillars, takes over their molting genes, and re-programs the zombie caterpillars to liquify and rain contagious bodily fluids down upon other gypsy moth larvae. [url]
• North American wood frogs can survive being partially frozen (up to 70 percent of their internal water turned to ice) and twitch back to life. The frogs can stay in suspended animation for about 4 weeks, and it takes them about a day to thaw out and return to the living world. [url]
• Ants in Borneo have been found with a curious ability to explode and spew a sticky yellow glue over their enemies. The lethal sticky substance can take out other insect invaders and protect an ant colony from attack. [url]
• European paper wasps, infected by parasites, are turned into zombies that leave their hive to gather with other zombie wasps -- so that the parasites can mate. Wasps with female parasites become crazy queen wasps that fly off to infect more wasps. [url]
• To discover more interesting biological curiosities, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Filed Under: ants, caterpillar, frogs, halloween, insects, parasites, virus, wasps, zombies