On Wed, 4 Aug 1999, Michael S. Lorrey wrote:
>
> Recently though, I met a girl who is a medical research student, and is
> doing a lot of experiments with flies. She claims that no flies can
> withstand freezing. We actually got into a heated argument about it. She
> claims that the flies are not actually frozen, that their metabolic
> activity maintains a pocket of warmth where they are at.
>
I find that hard to fathom. These flies were frozen inside several inches of solid ice, and covered in several feet of snow for over 9 months, during which the temperature ranges between -20 and -40 degrees celsius for most of that time. I understand that the snow and ice would offer some insulation from the air temperature above, but regardless that is still going to be a very cold place. How could a fly store enough energy to heat his little home for such an extended period of time?
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+| Aaron Davidson <ajd@ualberta.ca> http://ugweb.cs.ualberta.ca/~davidson/ |
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