The Danish popular science magazine Wiedenskab presents five types of true superpowers among mammals. For example, a giraffe can tolerate enormous blood pressure, and elephant seals hold their breath for many hours. Scientists tell how animals succeed in this and whether it is possible for a person to ever develop the same superpowers.
How do you like the idea of installing an air conditioner in your brain or holding your breath for two hours? Some mammals have almost supernatural powers.
We mammals have one thing in common - we give birth to live babies. After that, we focus on how to educate and feed them as best as possible, primarily with the help of our own milk.
But while the very basic principles of the physiology of all mammals are exactly the same, many animals are capable of what humans are not capable of.
The incredible adaptability of wild animals was the topic of a conference recently held at Aarhus University. On it, the researchers shared their knowledge of what animals are capable of in the laboratory, but paid special attention to how they behave in their natural environment.
Precisely because the basic principles of the structure of our bodies are the same, scientists hope that if you understand the superpowers of mammals, then one day this knowledge can be used in the development of technologies and medicines for the treatment of humans.
For example, some animals in the process of adaptation acquired the ability to cool their brains.
“We call this selective brain cooling, and if an animal is hungry and thirsty, you can tell by the temperature of the brain,” says Andrea Fuller, professor of physiology at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa.
Promotional video:
Andrea Fuller works on the adaptation of mammals to the harsh climatic conditions of the Kalahari Desert in southern Africa. Its sands cover an area equal to half of Denmark, and there is practically no water there.
But for many animals, these are just ordinary everyday worries. In this article, we'll take a look at the amazing abilities of five wild animals that have adapted to their habitat.
1. Aardvark cools its brain
For many years, people thought that animals like the aardvark, also known as the “earth pig,” survive in extremely hot and dry conditions, largely because they actively cool their brains.
This is how the so-called selective brain cooling works in many large mammals (primates are rather an exception):
- They cool the blood that has already donated oxygen, that is, venous blood.
- A special structure in the head allows you to create something like a lake of chilled blood.
- The hot blood that has just been oxygenated in the lungs, that is, arterial blood, travels to the circulatory system through this lake and cools before reaching the brain.
“Thus, our knowledge for a long time boiled down to the fact that animals living in the desert like aardvarks fight overheating of the brain in this way,” says Andrea Fuller, who studies the mechanisms of adaptation of mammals to life in the desert.
Desert animals can't afford to sweat
This is how the so-called selective brain cooling works in many large mammals (primates are rather an exception):
They cool the blood that has already donated oxygen, that is, venous blood.
A special structure in the head allows you to create something like a lake of chilled blood.
The hot blood that has just been oxygenated in the lungs, that is, arterial blood, travels to the circulatory system through this lake and cools before reaching the brain.
“Thus, our knowledge for a long time boiled down to the fact that animals living in the desert like aardvarks fight overheating of the brain in this way,” says Andrea Fuller, who studies the mechanisms of adaptation of mammals to life in the desert.
Desert animals can't afford to sweat
“But the most heat-sensitive system in the body is the intestines, and it will cook before the brain,” says Andrea Fuller.
Her research shows that animals aren't just conditioning their brains to save their lives (which won't cost much if their intestines boil).
They cool the brain to control sweating, which is regulated by the brain. Aardvark simply uses internal conditioning to keep the loss of water in sweat under control, which is very important in an environment with little to no water.
This is a super useful ability to cool the brain in a water shortage so as to prevent an impractical sweating signal.
You can read more about brain cooling of the aardvark and research into large mammals living under high temperatures in a free 2014 article published in the journal Physiology.
2. Hedgehog and others hibernating
In winter, the hedgehog goes into deep hibernation among twigs and wilted leaves, reducing the body's energy consumption to only 4% of normal metabolism.
In comparison, our absolute minimum during sleep is 65% of our normal metabolism.
In other words, the hedgehog is ready to stay in the "canned" state for a really long time. Everything in his body during hibernation happens very slowly.
Such a state in a person would be a great breakthrough when performing complex operations. Not to mention the coolest goal - a space trip to Mars.
How can hibernation be useful for a person?
Bears and countless small rodents can also hibernate, and hibernation-like conditions are observed in certain bird species.
Humans don't know how - yet - but would love to learn from experts in this matter who can keep the body running with minimal energy consumption.
A new study shows that naturally lowering body temperature may have great potential in the rehabilitation of people who have suffered cardiac arrest.
What about us? New research suggests that in fact, the time is not far off when there will be treatments similar to the hibernation of animals.
3. The elephant seal lives under a (huge) body of water
Despite their unusual appearance, elephant seals can dive 50 times a day to a depth of more than 2 thousand meters, and calmly remain under water for two hours, although they usually dive for "only" about half an hour.
We at Wiedenskub recently wrote about Filipino divers, who can also dive for a longer period than we, the rest of the land inhabitants. But even trained and possibly genetically adapted divers can hold their breath for "only" five minutes.
Unsurprisingly, experts call elephant seals the world's toughest deep-sea divers. Including whales.
“One of our elephant seals stayed 15 minutes at a depth of 2,000 meters, after only three minutes surfacing for air. They spend 90% of their time underwater. These animals are not 'divers'. They just live underwater,”concludes Mike Fedak, professor emeritus at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, who has worked with elephant seals for many years.
This conclusion is supported by the fact that elephant seals do not mind taking a light nap at a depth of 400 meters.
Elephant seals can control heart function
During the experiment, when the elephant seals swam in a closed tank, and the window through which air could be accessed was closed from time to time, Mike Fedak watched as the elephant seal deliberately practically stopped its heart, as soon as the scientist reached out his hand to the hatch.
Only recently has there been convincing evidence that diving mammals are perfectly consciously in control of their heart rates.
Also, diving mammals control their blood flow to send oxygen in the blood to the organs that need it most. For example, to the brain and heart, while the rest of the muscles must be content with their own oxygen reserves.
That is, elephant seals are experts at managing their own blood flow, and this is clearly seen in the way the heart rate suddenly slows down with one wave of the scientist's hand.
It's very interesting how and when elephant seals do it in nature. Does this explain their ability to dive for such a long time?
Deep sea collaboration for the benefit of all
Mike Fedak and ocean scientists who want to understand how the oceans behave and how they affect climate change have entered into an unusual partnership.
Equipped with sensors that measure, for example, water temperature and salinity, and send a GPS signal, elephant seals help oceanographers study the deep layers of the ocean, while Mike Fedak gains valuable insight into animal behavior at depth.
For more on this collaboration, in which seals are replacing an entire ship of scientists, see the MEOP website: Marine Mammals Exploring the Oceans Pole to Pole.
4. The giraffe's blood pressure should have killed him
Many features are associated with the long distance from the heart to the brain of a giraffe, requiring special adaptations.
Professor Tobias Wang, biology professor at the University of Aarhus, has been at the forefront of research on the giraffe's neck, legs and heart for many years with Kristian Aalkjær.
The heart of a giraffe should weigh twenty kilograms, says one joke. Indeed, a giraffe needs impressive pressure to deliver blood down that long neck to its brain - and it feels great with it.
The giraffe has a fat heart
But the weight of a giraffe's heart is only half a percent of the total body weight, just like ours.
But it does have extra thick walls of heart chambers, which provide additional blood pressure, as evidenced by new research results presented at the conference.
5. The alpaca remains half-cub all its life
In your mother's belly, you also used this - a super-type of protein called hemoglobin, which binds and transports oxygen in our blood.
In an unborn baby, hemoglobin is as red as the mother's, but because it has to move oxygen from the mother's circulatory system to the baby's own system, it has a greater ability to bind oxygen. This is characteristic of the hemoglobin of all mammalian babies until they are born.
This is used by the alpaca. She spends her life in high mountains, where the air is thin. Ordinary animals there would have to breathe much faster to get enough oxygen.
Unlike us, the rest, alpaca simply does not give up its childhood hemoglobin, as far as blood is concerned, it remains a child for life.
Many animals live at altitude
There are different examples of smart solutions for living in high mountains. Alpine yaks were talked about in Nature; mice, sheep and birds all have their own ways to survive at altitude.
“Quite often, animals solve at least part of the problem by 'tweaking' or making small adjustments to the hemoglobin that transports oxygen in the blood,” says Roy Weber, professor emeritus in the Department of Biological Sciences at Aarhus University, author of a review article on animal adaptation to life in high mountain conditions.
So we learned a bit about some of the impressive gadgets our cousins and evolutionary cousins have.
At their core, all mammals around us are just like us, so perhaps we will one day be able to learn and adopt some of their extraordinary abilities. Science will show.
Inge G. Revsbech