Daniel Blumstein
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
You know, you should not use marmots as a model for our behavior.
There's all sorts of sordid stuff going down with marmots.
Yes.
They're all about cat size.
Okay.
The Himalayan marmot, Marmota himalayaniana robusta.
I think the robusta, it's not like a beer or a coffee.
It's because it's big.
But most of them are sort of cat-sized animals.
But what's the size?
I mean, they double their mass every year.
Every year they double?
They hibernate.
Marmots are the biggest of the true hibernators.
Bears don't hibernate.
Bears estivate.
Bears can't lose enough body heat to properly hibernate.
So marmots lose their body heat.
Not only that, we did a study where we borrowed animals from the wild, brought them back to the lab, hibernated them, put them back to the wild when we were done with them.
And it turns out they actively suppress their metabolism and temperature rapidly.