Hibernation is a common response across most parts of the animal kingdom to winter weather, but humanity and our closest primary relationship have never been able to overcome it. With one exception, the fat-tailed dwarf lemur (Cheirogaleus medius) hibernates in the wild. However, once at the zoo they adopted a winter lifestyle like many of us, interrupting the study.
Now, for the first time in captivity, researchers at the Duke Lemur Center persuaded some of them to sit at home and close their bodies for the winter. Humans aside, primates tend to be tropical animals. Only Japanese macaques have established themselves in places where they are cold enough to hear frequently and create little evolutionary pressure to develop hibernation. The opposite possibility – that some congenital disability in hibernation keeps primates tropical – refuted by the discovery of fat-tailed dwarf lemurs off each winter for 3–7 months.
Pygmy slow Lorries have also reported to hibernate, but for less than three days, which gives them a normal aversion to movement, who can tell. Like all lemurs c. Medias lives in Madagascar, which is not cold enough for hibernation. However, the Madagascan winter is quite dry and there seems to be very little food so one species seems to have decided to sleep until it is blessed again.
However, fat-tailed dwarf lemurs remain active year-round in the zoo environment; their ability to hibernate not discovered until 2004. Dr. Marina Blanco wanted to know more about this unique initial behavior, whether it gives, people any indication to stop safely. To study true hibernation Blanco requires joining the captive lemurs. In the scientific report, Blanco describes how colleagues at the Duke Lemur Center created outdoor tree outposts, such as Blanco wild use.
Lemon girth temperatures were later lowered from 25ºC (77ºF) to 10-15ºC (50-59ºF), fine by Madagascan standards. The days in Madagascar were never too short, but the lights of the enclosure gradually shifted to 9.5 hours for half a day. Blanco said in a statement, the lemurs in the center have spent at least four generations without hibernating, and were in the wrong hemisphere anyway. Yet, “they did not disappoint.”
“Indeed, our dwarf lemurs have hibernated just like their wild relatives in western Madagascar.” Eight lemons spent their “winter” of 70 percent deep in torpedoes even food was available. “Blanco added.” Hibernation is literally in their DNA, “but unlike other hibernators, their body temperature fluctuates with ambient conditions. Lemurs have lost 22-25 percent of their body weight, mostly from their famous Fat Tail store, but it was very low when they found very little food while they were awake.
In addition to the opportunity to work on such adorable subjects, Blanco hopes that his work may prove transferable to humans. Fat-tailed dwarf lemurs have an unusually long lifespan for mammals of their size – up to 29 years – which means there must be something to this hibernation. The ability to keep one’s body closed for a while can have many uses if people can imitate it. Science fiction writers have suggested a long-delayed animation to reach out to the stars, which is really just an overdose.
Surgery and the recovery of certain medical conditions may be better if people can only sleep through the recovery of the body, while torpedoes allow people waiting for replacement organs to survive the delay.
