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Biological Miracle – Wood Frog

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501 points thunderbong | 1 comments | 15 Nov 24 18:16 UTC | HN request time: 0.208s | source
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abound ◴[16 Nov 24 04:12 UTC] No.42154107[source]▶
> Nobody yet understands what starts the wood frog’s heart after being frozen and inert for the entire northern winter.

To me, that's the most fascinating part of the (already quite fascinating) story. Frog is frozen solid, there is no (to our knowledge) heartbeat or brain activity. It thaws and something happens that gets it going again.

I have trouble imagining what that mechanism could even look like. Tiny portion of brain responsible for keeping track of frozen-ness? Some chemical signaling from within the body cavity?

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1. xg15 ◴[16 Nov 24 10:42 UTC] No.42155724[source]▶
Yeah, I was wondering about that too, but on the other hand, there are possibilities:

You don't need a brain to execute "programmed behavior" in a body, the cells have enough "compute" in the regulatory networks of their DNA, RNA and proteins to do that on their own (and in fact do it all the time as part if their normal functioning. That's what "metabolism" means.)

Another question would be where the cells take the energy to execute that program if blood circulation has halted and there is no oxygen. But then on the other hand, at that point they are filled to the brim with glucose. So I wonder if this isn't just to prevent freezing but also as an energy reserve for the "restart".

(Sorry for the bad programming analogies in this post, please don't take them too literally)