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"Family of Birds" by Octavio Ocampo |
Don’t laugh. It hasn't been that long ago that we discovered through research like bird banding that titmice don’t ever go very far from the territory where they were born and that hummingbirds can fly thousands of miles south under their own steam in the fall and return to Michigan to nest in the spring.
And some birds do go into a mini-hibernation called torpor during the night. Torpor is a kind of deep sleep accompanied by drastically lowered body temperature, heart rate, and breathing. Hibernation is defined as a sustained state of torpor. Scientists have found that some birds like chickadees go into a nocturnal torpor to conserve energy during the winter. But just how they do this is still a mystery.
Today Seth Donahue, an associate professor of biomedical engineering at Michigan Tech University, is working in collaboration with scientists in Alaska to understand how bears survive on less oxygen during hibernation and can stave off osteoporosis.
He is testing a drug derived from black bear parathyroid hormone, an amino-acid-based hormone that provides better bone-building properties. This would help people that are bedridden or perhaps people on long space missions.
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