A squirrel way up north hibernates for eight months of the year. That's 67% of the year. In that time, the little creature's body temperature lowers to sub-freezing levels, but it still comes back when the time is right.
Where we see a particularly strange park mouse, scientists see a unique mammal that may teach us more about how to hack our bodies.
Nasa sees this unique ability to hibernate, called "torpor," as a secret to long-distance space travel. While the body enters the sub-freezing temperatures, it takes only one breath per minute and has a heart rate of just five beats per minute.
Brain medicine research shows that lowering a body's temperature slows down brain damage. While keeping somebody on ice forever isn't possible, learning about the effects of super-cold on the brain could aid in the production of medications that could mimic the slowing effects of cold on damage. Simultaneously, the ability to come out of such long and physically testing hibernation with a working brain indicates there may be something to learn about strokes and Alzheimer's, according to researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.