Natures wonders: Muscle building while hibernating (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, December 11, 2014, 21:00 (3633 days ago) @ David Turell

Long distance migratory birds also build muscle without exercising.-http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/inkfish/2014/12/04/no-exercise-plan-squirrels-build-muscle-while-hibernating/#5465-"From the MRI scans, the scientists calculated the volume of the animals' hind leg muscles. They saw that as ground squirrels lost weight, their muscles shrank too. But while the squirrels weighed the least in April—at the end of their hibernation—their muscle volume stopped plummeting before then. Sometime during the final two months of hibernation, squirrels' muscles started to pump up, even while the rest of their bodies continued shrinking.-"In a separate study, researchers directly sampled the muscles of Ictidomys tridecemlineatus at different times during hibernation. They looked at several muscles from both the front and back legs. Once again, they saw that muscles started to grow at the end of winter, while the squirrels themselves were still withering away."