tardigrades -> wood frogs -> ... -> humans
Biological Miracle – Wood Frog
141–145 of 145 posts
Re: Biological Miracle – Wood Frog
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interestingly, you can freeze a rat solid in liquid nitrogen--completely solid right through--and then thaw them out in a microwave and they actually survive. Well, many of them survive. For a while. Okay, it's not good for the rats but it's still crazy that it works.
Where can I read more about this? If this was a fact I think people would be way more excited about cryonics. Casually browsing wikipedia suggests that we are not there yet with the ability to thawn large animals or even organs.
These experiments are exactly why people were excited about cryonics, until they realized that it doesn't work on anything much larger than a rat.
You have to thaw them right down to the core very quickly; you need to get the heart pumping or the thawed extremities will die with no bloodflow. There's no way to heat a human's core that fast without causing unsurvivable burns to their outside. (Even the rats wound up with nasty, sometimes fatal burns.)
Re: Biological Miracle – Wood Frog
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some animals regenerate, some form scar tissue. It's thought that scar tissue is a cheaper and faster mechanism than regrowing limbs and has thus been selected in many cases.
If an iguana loses its tail, it doesn't just bleed until the new tail starts forming, right? Doesn't it seal up and then regrow?
Yeah it does form a clot and a thin skin layer, but it remains somewhat like a wound much longer and is easier to hurt again than scar tissue covers up a wound quite quickly.
Re: Biological Miracle – Wood Frog
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or water… or anything else with a freezing point that the ambient temperature crosses at night
Oh sorry, I more meant specific to the times when you harvest maple syrup. If you didn't know, you need to wait to harvest maple syrup until you have a series of days when the daytime temperature is above freezing and the nighttime temperature is below freezing. This causes the maple sap to flow and allows it to collect in the bucket. https://botanistinthekitchen.blog/2013/03/18/maple-syrup-mec...
That’s pretty cool. Is there anything else that requires a freeze-thaw cycle to harvest?
Re: Biological Miracle – Wood Frog
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh sorry, I more meant specific to the times when you harvest maple syrup. If you didn't know, you need to wait to harvest maple syrup until you have a series of days when the daytime temperature is above freezing and the nighttime temperature is below freezing. This causes the maple sap to flow and allows it to collect in the bucket. https://botanistinthekitchen.blog/2013/03/18/maple-syrup-mec...
That’s pretty cool. Is there anything else that requires a freeze-thaw cycle to harvest?
I'm not actually sure. Maple syrup is all I'm aware of.