By: jing xean & thaara

Summary By elizabeth

In this session, we covered the topic of hibernation and expanded on the common misconception of the belief that hibernation means "sleeping". Despite the similarities, hibernation is rather when animals enter an inactive state and experience a lower metabolism, heart and breathing rate while also not generating waste. If you measure their brain waves, they hold different waves compared to the regular waves seen when sleeping; it has a higher resemblance to when an animal is active and awake. Some examples of animals that hibernate are: chipmunks, dwarf lemurs and wood frogs; though as a side note, some animals don't sleep throughout the whole winter season. How does it work exactly? In the animal's immobile state, it doesn't require lots of energy and it uses up its stored fat to survive the harsh weather. To prepare for hibernation, animals gather and eat food as much as they can to create stored fat in their bodies. Creatures hibernate in order to survive the harsh climate conditions, overcome the scarce food resources during the winter and to hide and stay protected from predators - since they don't create much noise or movement when they hibernate. We breached the topic on whether humans could hibernate? After all, if we could, those living in snow wouldn't need to worry much about food. We compared it to an induced coma, where someone is rendered unconscious to fight against diseases. Unfortunately humans can't go into hibernation; our ancestors never hibernated so our body isn't adapted to do so. Furthermore, if the human body were to drop by even 2.7°C, they would face complications such as brain damage and weaker immune systems. At the end of the presentation we held a small recap quiz and will be giving out small snacks as a reward to our winners: Mr Ali and Jing Yan!

presentation of discussion

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