A LIVING DEATH

Greymouth Evening Star, 17 May 1934, Page 9

A LIVING DEATH

ANIMALS THAT SLEEP YEARS Scientists have begun the first investigation of the age-old mystery of hibernation. In the answer to this riddle may lie the clue to the greater mystery of life itself. How, for instance, do bears spend the winter? A group of scientists, knowing that, science cannot answer the question satisfactorily, is about to seek a solution of the riddle. If they can do so we may at last see more surely into the deeper mystery of life (writes

Manfred Patterson). It is a .strange fact that science does not know how bears do spend the winter. True, each bear, on the approach of the. cold season, disappears into a eave, a hole, a hollow between or beneath the roots of a tree, and there sleeps until spring. But is his sleep unbroken? Does he fast the whole time? Does he breathe normally? Is his bodily heat maintained? How does he behave if disturbed? We know none of these things. A strict adherence to a scheduled time of sleeping and waking, irrespective of conditions, nas been observed of certain insects and other small creatures. One experimenter tried to force snails to hibernate in midsummer by submitting them to artificial cold almost as low as freezing point. B.ut apparently the 'snails knew that the laboratory winter was not real; they would not go to bed under the artificial conditions. In the autumn I they lapsed into dormancy. In another great laboratory twentyfour specimens of the African lungfish have been kept asleep for more than two years by artificial control of their surroundings. In their native land these lungfish are accustomed to a summer dry spell, when the streams fail. The swamps in wdiich they live harden, and everything becomes dry and parched. So their protective instinct has produced in them a habit of burrowing deep in the mud, curling tail over head, and giving out a mucus which covers the body and hardens into an enclosing membrane, open only at the mouth, as an outlet for breathing. There, in its tight little cocoon, around which the mud slowly hardens, the fish sleeps through the dry season until the rain seeps down through the caked mud to awaken it.

SUMMER SLEEPERS The lungfish arc summer sleepers, and there is a long list of creatures ; in the tropics that retire into dor- ' mancy with the onset of the annual drought, just as in the temperate zones the hihernators retire before the cold. This summer sleep (or "estivation”) presents much the same ; phenomenon as hibernation, and the two instincts may be regarded as prae- . tically identical. The same psychological conditions have been observed in varying degrees in certain northern animals during hibernation. One of the most slumbrous is the hedgehog. It goes to bed in the autumn a fal roly-poly; it wakes up in the Spring almost skin and bones. Experiments with woodchucks and bats show that in certain animals respiration is suspended, or practically so. during 'be .hibernation period. Oth

er experiments show that digestion and elimination are similarly suspended, the body being nourished by the complete absorption of nutrients stoped up in certain cells. But how long can the process of living in a closed system be maintained? An interesting incident occurred in, New York recently. A gang of workmen excavating under a pavement dug up' five frogs. They were found embedded in the clay at a- depth of 10ft below the pavement, and appeared to be mummified remains of some unfortunate animals that had been covered up sears before. They were tossed to £ne side of the trench, and the workers went on with some pipe-fitting operations.

Half an hour later one of the men was astonished to see the five frogs hopping around. They were feeble and rather unsteady on their legs, but quite obviously alive. Reference to records showed that this place was originally swampy land which had been filled in when the building was erected in 1899, since which time the ground had not been disturbed.' If the frogs had been imprisoned in the swamp land at the time of its filling in a hibernation period of thirty-four years was indicated! Could a frog iive thirty-four years wedged in a bank of hard clay 10ft underground? Possibly, but not probably. These five frogs died soon after. Frogs have been known to recover from hibernation even when ice has formed in the blood and in the lymph of the peritoneal cavity. Insects frozen so stiff that they break like brittle crayons, revive, and crawl away when thawed out. One wonders how much life can stand.

A story from Australia w r ell authenticated by zoologists concerns a bucket of wat.er snails that were collected, dumped into a dry can for temporary keeping, and then forgotten for fifteen months. They were a dry and apparently dead mass when rediscovered. but'when dipped in water almost all of them revived. Even more remarkable is the story of a shell in the British Museum. It was the shell of an Egyptian desert snail which had been mounted on a base. Four years after it had been placed on exhibit one of the museum attendants noticed a trace of slime streaking down the base aw r ay from the supposedly empty shell. The thing was immediately immersed in water. The wetting detached the shell from its base, and presently the fouryear sleeper put. out its feelers and began to crawl. One of the incentives to tho study of hibernation is the expectation that through it light may be shed on the fundamental mechanism of sleep.