Each September, the wood frogs of Alaska do a very bizarre thing. They freeze. Supposed they do not freeze totally solid, but they do freeze typically solid. Two-thirds of their body water turns to ice. If you chose them up, they would not move.
Inside these frozen frog’s other weird physical things are going on too. Their hearts stop whipping, their blood no longer flows and their glucose levels upsurges. On a certain level they are fundamentally dead. The separate cells of their body are still operative, but they have no way to connect with each other.
The silliest thing of all may be that in this frozen state, they can endure temperatures as low as zero degrees Fahrenheit for as long as seven months, and then, when coil arrives, they thaw out and hop away.
Each Sep., the wood frogs of Alaska do a very odd thing: They freeze. They do not freeze completely solid, but they do freeze typically solid. Two-thirds of their body water turns to ice. If you chosen them up, they would not move. If you determined one of their legs, it would break.
Inside these frozen frogs’ other weird physical things are going on. Their hearts stop thrashing, their blood no longer flows and their glucose levels sky rocket. “On an organismic level they are fundamentally dead,” said Don Larson, a graduate scholar at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks who studies frogs. “The separate cells are still operative, but they have no way to connect with each other.”
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