Don't sleep, wake up! I'm hibernating

Have you noticed that after a large wave of rainfall, snails pop up like bamboo shoots after a rain, popping up in cracks in rocks, on tree barks, and in damp corners of walls. But in the scorching and dry weather, it is difficult to find any trace of their activities. Occasionally, if you find a few, they are also dried snails.

Many people think that dried snails are dead, because they do not seem to have any signs of life and are so dry that they seem like they would break with a slight squeeze. In fact, if such snails are placed in a bottle of water, they will amazingly revive after a short while, sticking out their soft bodies and stretching.

Do these snails have some ability to come back to life? No, in fact, they are just hibernating.

We have heard of many hibernating animals, such as bears, hedgehogs, snakes, frogs, etc. Hibernating animals can reduce their heartbeat and breathing to extremely low levels and only maintain the most basic metabolism. In this way, they can avoid the severe winter with food shortages and survive until the day when spring comes.

Therefore, like hibernation, choosing to hibernate in the summer is also a choice made by animals to prolong their lives in extreme weather. Not only snails, but also animals that hibernate include cutworms, (which are actually insects) African lungfish, sand lizards, grassland tortoises, yellow mice, etc. Hibernation can not only resist food shortages, but also resist heat and drought.

Snails like humid environments, so when the environment becomes too hot and dry, they choose to retract their bodies into their shells and cover the shell opening with mucus to reduce water loss. At this time, their life activities are also reduced to only maintaining the most basic metabolism. When the environment becomes humid and warm, they will gradually wake up and restore their normal vitality.

The life span of a snail varies from species to species, ranging from 1 to 10 years, but generally speaking it is 5 to 6 years. The snail hibernation period can be several months or even years, and some snails in desert areas may even hibernate for several years. Therefore, do not assume that a snail that does not move is dead, they may just be sleeping.

I just mentioned food shortages. Some friends may wonder why there is food shortage in summer. In fact, in addition to animals on land, there are also animals in the sea that hibernate, such as sea cucumbers. In summer, when the sea temperature rises, some benthic diatoms and microorganisms float to the surface to reproduce, and sea cucumbers living on the seabed have nothing to eat and will face food shortages. In addition, sea cucumbers contain autolytic enzymes in their bodies, and they may die if the sea temperature is too high.

So summer is to sea cucumbers like winter is to hedgehogs. You know what? They look a bit alike. So sea cucumbers choose to lose weight to a tiny size in summer, and then hide in the safety of rocks to hibernate. When the water temperature drops in autumn, sea cucumbers wake up, start eating, and grow.

In the hot summer, not only animals, but also humans are more likely to feel sleepy. The days are longer in the northern hemisphere in the summer, and waking up early in the morning will reduce the sleep time of many people. When the hot summer comes, people are already sleep deprived, and staying outdoors for half an hour can feel like a death sentence. The whole person just feels dizzy and weak, and wants to sleep.

Hot weather will cause the body to sweat a lot, resulting in the loss of water and electrolytes, and the loss of some electrolytes will also make people feel tired, sleepy, and unwilling to move. This is why you will find that the closer you are to the equator, the slower the pace of life is and the more likely you are to be lazy, because the climate determines that people there cannot work 996.

There is an old saying that goes, "Spring makes you sleepy, autumn makes you tired, summer makes you nap, and winter makes you sleepy in March." Do I need a reason to want to sleep all year round?