PAre you taking part in Dry January – in French, “January challenge” or “month without alcohol”? This truce in the consumption of alcoholic beverages, launched in 2013 in the United Kingdom during a campaign by the alcoholism prevention association Alcohol Concern (now Alcohol Change UK), mobilizes each year a growing number of adults wishing to to spare their liver or relieve their wallet after the holidays. The benefits of such a treatment are tangible: in follow-up surveys carried out during previous editions, more than half of the participants noted an improvement in the quality of their sleep, better shape or more beautiful skin, and more than A third say they have lost weight. Some are committed to a lasting reduction in their alcohol consumption.
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None of the participants, however, will achieve the record sobriety of the striped ground squirrel. No question of alcohol here: this ground squirrel from the prairies of North America spends the winter without eating or drinking water. Its hibernation period can last up to eight months, from the end of August to the beginning of April! Curled into a ball at the bottom of its burrow, it only emerges from its deep lethargy for about one day every two weeks.
During phases of torpor, its metabolism is slowed down to the extreme: its body temperature drops below 5°C and it loses very little water through evaporation. During intermittent waking phases, his body temperature rises to 37°C and his heart rate returns to normal. He then loses more water when breathing, or even when urinating – although his urine is very concentrated. Surprisingly, despite its increasing dehydration, the animal does not feel thirst: even if it is experimentally provided with water, it hardly drinks.
-A muffled response
To understand what suppresses the striped ground squirrel’s need to drink during hibernation, a research team from Yale University (Connecticut) compared its physiology in summer and during its occasional phases of winter activity. The results, published at the end of November 2024 in the journal Sciencereveal that all physiological mechanisms for perceiving dehydration are operational during hibernation. In response to the drop in blood volume, which is significant in dehydrated squirrels, their body produces different hormones including angiotensin II, known to promote the reabsorption of sodium and water in the kidneys.
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