I’m a Scientist is like school science lessons meet the X Factor! School students choose which scientist gets a prize of $1000 to communicate their work.
Scientists and students talk on this website. They both break down barriers, have fun and learn. But only the students get to vote.
This zone is the Organs Zone. It has scientists studying health and disease in various parts of our bodies. Who gets the prize? YOU decide!
2 reasons:
1) our ancestors were tropical animals with no history of hibernating. Humans have only migrated into temperate and sub-arctic latitudes in the last hundred thousand years or so. That’s not quite long enough to evolve all the metabolic adaptations we would need to be able to hibernate. We don’t have the body make up to allow us to hibernate.
2) Much more importantly, we discovered fire, clothes, shelter, hunting and agriculture, all of which are much more effective ways of surviving the cold. Any ancient tribes that tried to sleep their way through the winter would quickly have been ousted by the guys with the fur clothes sitting around the camp fire in the next cave along.
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Great answer, Emma!
Although, i’d quite like to sleep through winter!
It’s been a long, cold, rainy one here in Adelaide! 🙁
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+1 for Emma.
Well put.
Simple answer: we don’t need to…
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Actually…there are some cases of humans hibernating. Hibernation is just a state where your body temp, breathing, and metabolic rate slow down. People have done this naturally during extreme states of stress (falling into freezing water, having to stay alive without food in a car…see the article at the bottom), but scientists are actually working on inducing hibernation in humans by first making mice produce a hibernation chemical that they don’t normally produce. Check it out:
https://www.livescience.com/211-hibernation-technique-work-humans.html
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