“The world is watching: one cannot walk through a meadow or forest without a ripple of report spreading from one’s passage. The thrush darts back, the jay squalls, a beetle scuttles under the grasses, and the signal is passed along. Every creature knows when a hawk is circling, or a human is strolling. The information passed through the system is intelligence.” (The Etiquette of Freedom by Gary Snyder, from The Practice of the Wild [North Point Press, 1990])
It’s the time of re-awakening…
Here on the northeast edge of the Colorado Plateau, the local newspaper reports the first bear sighting of the season. Two days past a snowstorm, with another on the way tomorrow and flurries today, but in the field behind the house mouse and vole tunnels hidden all winter are now roofless trails, as melting snow exposes the narrow channels in the matted grass. Mud season is back and ephemeral creeks run brown, beginning to fill catchment ponds that will soon be frequented by all that depend on the forest — later, our dog will sniff their tracks in the dried out mud. Bear, deer, elk, coyote, fox, and more. Driving towards the promise of sunshine and dryer trails in the sandstone canyons beyond the southwest side of our home range, we see a crowd of sun-seekers lounging and scampering on a remnant snowfield along the road — a prairie dog town shaking off winter’s torpor.
These are most likely Gunnison’s Prairie Dogs, one of four species of a rodent vilified and praised by humans — and eaten by many other dryland denizens and passersby. The Utah Prairie Dog predominates a bit further west, while north and east are the home ranges of White-tailed and Black-tailed varieties, though studies show a fair amount of territorial (and some genetic) crossing of the neat lines drawn on range maps.
Although many livestock growers and horse-riding devotees curse their burrows for the danger to incautious hoof placements, and housing tract developers and property managers despise the species’ habit of colonizing vacant lots, the biological literature describes prairie dogs as a keystone species for their habitat. Their burrowing activities help absorb snowmelt and rain while aerating the soil and increasing the growth rate of surrounding vegetation. Hawks, eagles, coyotes, snakes, and Black-footed ferrets depend on hunting them. Burrowing owls take up residence in abandoned tunnels, rattlesnakes ‘brumate’ in them for the winter. Despite the seasonal road-kill toll and ongoing efforts by resentful humans to eradicate various populations, the Gunnison’s population is listed by the IUCN RedList as ‘least-threatened’, mostly due to their short (approx. 30-day) gestation period and an ability to rebound from famines caused by drought or periodic over-population cycles, though with a decreasing population across Colorado, Arizona, Utah, New Mexico.
Reading some scientific literature for this week’s post, I noted some inconsistency in the terms used for dormancy (hibernation, torpor, brumation, etc.) among various species — so upon further research, here’s a short journey into the sometimes slippery terminology, with an unexpected detour into space fantasy or future fact (you get to be the judge on that one):
Some warm-blooded animal species (mammals, birds, etc.) react to cold temperatures by slowing metabolic and respiration rates, lowering body temperature, and entering a drowsing state called torpor (prairie dogs, bears, some birds), with periodic arousing to eat and move about.
A few species enter a sleep called hibernation (hummingbirds, bats, some rodents), in which the body temperature drops to match the air temperature, from which it is difficult to be aroused.
For reptiles (snakes, lizards, some amphibians and fish), a similar cold-initiated process is called brumation.
To escape heat, some species become torpid via a different metabolic process called estivation.
Now we get to humans, and this is where things turn, ahem, a wee bit fantastical...
Clicking the caption above will take you to a synopsis of a scheme to induce torpor in humans for (as the promo material states), “SLEEPING YOUR WAY TO MARS!” Clicking the image will take the bold amongst us on an envisioned journey to the Red Planet, complete with executive summary, introduction and rationale, background, and a rather impressive laundry list of considerations and supporting data, topped off with multiple graphs, charts, figures, bibliography, and acronyms. Read it if you dare, but I do want to note the idea was apparently presented to NASA by a company called Spaceworks, lest I be accused of blaming the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for any hubris in the proposal. As far as I know, there have been no updates to the project’s proposal since 2017, but I’ll keep an eye on the sky for us all.
On that note, and with a nod to retro-Trekkies everywhere, I came across this image of the surface of Mars…
…but not to worry — the University of Arizona’s Lunar & Planetary Laboratory, which manages the project, assures us all that it is only a coincidence that has some among you thinking the Starfleet has landed. No, it’s just the preserved shape of a sand dune that was surrounded by a lava flow long ago, the sand then blown away by the planet’s windstorms. On this too, you get to be your own judge.
So far, the plan to artificially induce torpor in humans seems to have progressed no further than inducing mild hypothermia for therapeutic purposes after brain trauma, so it seems there is still time to go out in the new season and stroll with our neighbors on the home planet. When passing near a prairie dog colony, I sometimes stop to listen for awhile, trying to interpret their chirps, yips and chatter — though I know that just as human phrasing remains foreign in the colonists’ ears, most of their communication is far beyond my fathoming. But prairie dogs shaking torpor outside recently revealed burrows exude vibrant energy. Coming out of winter into another spring, this much I can acknowledge and pass along.
Up next, I’ll explore some ways to share space with another of our torpor-rested neighbors, in Bear Talk. Until then, let’s help each other enjoy the good planet we inhabit. - B.
Here’s a fairly comprehensive look at types of dormancy from Britannica.com.
To learn more about current population and habitat status for various species around the world, here’s a search tool from the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species (IUCN)
Finally, because I couldn’t resist, here’s a graphics-heavy presentation of the scheme for sleeping your way to Mars. Enjoy the trip!