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Sarah Rice is the lead author of the paper and a Ph.D. student at UAF’s Institute of Arctic Biology. She says during the winter, arctic ground squirrels enter a state of extreme hibernation. They can take their body temperature below freezing, when they re in hibernation their heartbeats five times a minute, and they breathe once a minute, they re just this incredible animal. It s almost like in a suspended state of animation. And how they do that, you know, some people discovered certain things with it, but we don t know exactly how it works completely.
Arctic ground squirrels can hibernate for up to eight months and they appear to awake from their winter sleep without the impacts of starvation or muscle loss. Rice wanted to know how they stayed in such good shape without exercise or food.