Dr. Steven Novella
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
It's not torpor.
No, it's not that.
It's not torpor.
It's not hibernation.
It's just significantly reducing its metabolic rate.
And they identified the gene that allows it to do that, and they showed that the gene is temperature responsive.
So it's able...
to, in warm water, have a higher metabolic rate, and then it goes into cold water, and its metabolic rate goes way, way, way down.
So it's cold-induced metabolic suppression.
So that's one method that they use.
The other method that they use, nobody mentioned anything about this.
This is cool.
They have a massive stomach.
It's like two-thirds of their body is a stomach.
Really?
And so what they do is when they are active and they have access to food, they gorge.
They fill their stomach and then they turn what they eat into like this sludge, this condensed sludge.
I do this all the time.
Your stomach's not two-thirds of you.
Which also inhibits the bacteria from eating it all themselves, right?