so there's clearly some kind of on off switch for the fat tail dwarf lemurs it looks like a combination of low temperatures long nights and less food triggers hibernation and inducing torpor in people by lowering their body temperature is something that's done in certain medical procedures but not for long enough for it to count as hibernation so there has to be more to it than that for us because hibernation would really be the goal for making things like long-distance space travel possible and it's something that nasa has been funding research on since NUMBER_TOKEN. one hurdle that we'd have to get over is our brains part of what happens in the lemurs during the inner bowel arousal periods when they warm up is rem sleep which is actually kind of a funny thought that animals seem to need sleep to recover from hibernation but some researchers have suggested that torpor is actually more like being sleep deprived than like being asleep at least from your brain's perspective we aren't sure why this is the case but we'd need to figure out how to protect our brains from the effects of long-term torpor before we try to send anyone to mars another hurdle is that we don't have the same kind of ability to store fat and use it in yearly cycles as the dwarf lemurs we also don't have a convenient tail for storage a dwarf lemur hibernation expert we spoke to for this episode dr marina blanco speculated that storing fat in the tail might make it easier for these tree living primates to move around or that it might be a safer place for the lemurs to store fat from a health perspective we know that in people having a lot of fat around your organs can be associated with medical problems it might be a similar situation for the lemurs if we could figure out this part of the hibernation equation for space travel we might also be a step closer to using that knowledge to treat metabolic conditions like diabetes so it seems like the fat tail dwarf lemur still has a lot of primate hibernation secrets to share and maybe my dream of hibernating for the winter isn't as far away as i thought we want to give a special thanks to dr marina blanco dr lydia green and the duke lemur center for their help with this episode and for the use of all this incredible footage and images and all these little fuzzy guys the pin club subscription window is open now through the end of december NUMBER_TOKENth and it makes a great gift the lemur pin is just so cute sign up today and you'll get the lemur pin in the middle of the month and the pins after that around the time each new video goes live and make sure you like and subscribe to our channel so you never miss a beast and as always profits from the pin club go to support our community's efforts to decrease maternal mortality in sierra leone
START_INTERACTION_TOKEN the pin club subscription window is open now through the end of december NUMBER_TOKENth and it makes a great gift the lemur pin is just so cute sign up today and you'll get the lemur pin in the middle of the month and the pins after that around the time each new video goes live and make sure you like and subscribe to our channel so you never miss a beast and as always profits from the pin club go to support our community's efforts to decrease maternal mortality in sierra END_INTERACTION_TOKEN