the.com/dormancy
Life hitting pause without ever hitting stop, betting everything on better weather later.
means A state of suspended activity or growth in which something living stays alive but inactive, waiting for conditions to improve before resuming.
from From Latin 'dormire,' to sleep — the same root that gives us 'dormant,' 'dormitory' (a sleeping room), and the 'dormer' window that watches over a bedroom. The path runs through Old French 'dormir' into English, where the suffix '-ancy' turns the act of sleeping into the condition of it. So dormancy is, quite literally, the state of sleeping — though biology borrows the word for seeds and bears and buds that are only pretending to sleep, hoarding their breath for spring.
- seed record
- A 32,000-year-old seed was revived into a flower
- frozen frogs
- Wood frogs stop their hearts all winter, then thaw
- tardigrade trick
- Survives the vacuum of space by drying to dust
- bear myth
- Hibernating bears do not actually fully sleep
- bacterial spores
- Some endospores survive millions of years dormant
wood frog — freezes solid in winter with up to 70% of body water turning to ice, thaws in spring
tardigrade — enters cryptobiosis and survives 30 years without water or food in suspended animation
arctic ground squirrel — hibernates for 8 months in alaska, body temperature drops to -2.9°c