Eugene Leitl wrote:
>What you describe is actually not freezing, as only a minor fraction
>of the organism is turned to ice.
Hmm, when I read (multiple) accounts and see pictures of full-grown koi frozen solid in the clear ice at the top of a winter pond for several months, only to thaw and live on in the spring, I consider that 'frozen', whether or not all the liquid in their bodies was crystalized or simply in a colloid 'slush'. I have had people question whether Lucky-fish too, was simply quiescent in the unfrozen muddy silt at the bottom of my pond. Let me assure you, on my very exposed deck, up here in New England, the fish pond (which is a 40gal tub supported on blocks with no insulating material under it), with only several gallons of water in it (ie <2 inch layer), freezes completely after a few days of <10°F weather. After 60 days of continuous frost, it is *rock* solid frozen. And that little fish, maybe 2-3 oz at the time (much larger now), was assuredly frozen solid as well. There was even a fishy-shaped cavity on a couple pieces of the ice slab that I removed.
It may say in cryo textbooks that higher animals don't freeze, but having a brother who personally discovered several new species of insect in NJ in the 1980s, I have a good appreciation for the incompleteness of our official understanding of the natural world.
| Jeffrey Fabijanic, Designer The Future exists, | Primordial Software first in Imagination, | "Software of the First Order" then in Will, | Boston, MA * (617) 983-1369 and finally in Reality.