ScienceAlert: Early Humans May Have Hibernated Through Long Winters, Study Hints

Mainly posting for the irresistible headline

Just as I got used to seeing myself as a dauering - is that a word? - nematode I may have to readjust my self-image to prehistoric fossil, or rather to semi-incompetent-at-hibernating prehistoric fossil. Stuff those illness beliefs...

Hmm.... but did we?

https://www.sciencealert.com/early-humans-may-have-hibernated-through-long-winters

Link to study (all about old bones, perhaps unsurprisingly):

Antonis Bartsiokas, Juan-Luis Arsuaga
Hibernation in hominins from Atapuerca, Spain half a million years ago/Hibernation des hominidés d’Atapuerca, en Espagne, il y a un demi-million d’années
L'Anthropologie, Volume 124, Issue 5, 2020

Abstract in English, Sci-Hub goes to the wrong article.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0003552120300832#!

 

Presumably there would been all manner of unhelpful traits (couldn't resist that ) which ancestors to Homo sapiens will have had.

 

I was thinking how nice a good long hibernation would be, then I thought what it would be like when I woke up. It would not be two or three hours to come too, but two or three months. (A single night at a time of unresfreshing sleep is enough for me.)

 

Animals that hibernate have to acquire lots of fat during the summer to keep them alive during the winter, don't they? If that was true for humans it would change the entire nature of human life, human fashion and what makes a mate desirable. Who wants to hibernate with their partner only to wake up with a dead body that had starved to death?

Edit : Typo

 

I take back the ancient fossil thing - looks like what we're really doing is training for a mission to Mars .

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/st...rol-hibernation-like-behavior-are-discovered/

We also have this thread on mouse torpor neurons:
https://www.s4me.info/threads/neurons-that-regulate-mouse-torpor-2020-hrvatin-et-al.15514/

 

Ditto.